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The power of simplicity: reducing maternal mortality in districts in Sierra Leone and Burundi

May 13, 2013, 11:30 am
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Following my piece about maternal health in India, and in advance of the UCL symposium on community-based global maternal care next week, I wanted to focus on two smaller-scale success stories and examine what makes them work. Medecins Sans Frontieres has been working on two projects aimed at reducing women’s risk of death in childbirth in the Kabezi district in Burundiand the Bo district in Sierra Leone.
MSF has produced an analysis of the challenges and gains of its work in a report called Safe Delivery (link takes you to a short précis) which looks at their work in Kabezi since the 2006 start of the project, and in Bo since the MSF began running a hospital there in 2003.

Image taken for MSF by Sarah Elliott, showing a successful emergency
birth in Burundi - I love the woman's smile.
Both Sierra Leoneand Burundi are at a disadvantage when it comes to maternal care as their health infrastructures – along with much else – have broken down during and in the aftermath of civil war. The long effect of such breakage is a deficit of human, educational and practical resources: so medical facilities are needed, as are qualified healthcare workers, as are the systems to employ them in a sustainable way and the educational infrastructures required to train them. This is before we tackle the important issue of patients’ own access to healthcare and the importance of antenatal and postpartum care. All this requires investment, establishment, organisation and management. According to MSF Burundi has a national average of 800 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births, and Sierra Leone has a national average of 890 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births. Sierra Leonehas the third-highest rate of maternal death, after Chadand Somalia. The main causes of maternal death are haemorrhage (25%), sepsis (15%), unsafe abortion (13% - and the report states clearly that “abortions need to be performed by skilled medical workers in a safe and hygienic environment”), hypertensive disorders like eclampsia and pre-eclampsia; and obstructed labour.

As the report – which can be read in full here - states,
Every year, some 287,000 women die [globally] from complications during pregnancy and childbirth. Most are young, active and healthy. And for every woman who dies, another 20 women suffer from chronic ill health or disability due to conditions such as obstetric fistula.* 
Across the world, in every country and every  population group, approximately 15 percent of  pregnant women develop complications that are potentially life-threatening. But the fate of a  pregnant woman is very much dictated by where  she gives birth in the world. In fact, 99% of  maternal deaths occur in poor countries, where – for many people – medical services are out of reach or simply unaffordable
Yet the local district projects  (serving a population of nearly 600,000 in Bo and just under 200,000 in Kabezi) have shown that when addressing this issue the implementation of basic – or rather, obvious – measures has steeply reduced rates of maternal death. The report stresses that the problem is not a lack of “state of the art facilities” and shows how the establishment of an ambulance system and the availability of emergency in-hospital emergency obstetric care, with trained staff and appropriate medical supplies, twenty-four hours a day, for free, have brought the Kabezi figures down to 74% less than the national level for Burundi and the Bo figures down to 61% less than the national level for Sierra Leone. In both cases the cost of providing such measures to the population for free is less than 2 Euros per head in Bo and a tiny bit over 3 Euros in Kabezi.

One of the UN Millennium Development Goals is to reduce maternal mortality (in comparison with figures from 1990) by 75% by 2015. Judging by the success of the projects I’ve described above, extreme change is possible through the implementation of simple but profoundly important measures. As the report states,
A common assumption is  that improving access to emergency obstetric care is too costly, but MSF’s experience shows that this need not be the case.

*Despite the triumphs of the two projects I’ve described, in February of this year MSF released a press alert announcing that Burundi’s only free provider of treatment for obstetric fistula, which is caused by complications during childbirth, is under threat of close due to a lack of trained medical staff. The UrumuriCenter, in the city of Gitega, is run jointly by Burundi’s Ministry of Health and MSF and treatment is provided by foreign volunteer surgeons on short-time assignments.


Bidisha is a 2013 Fellow for the International Reporting Project. She is reporting on issues of global health and development. 
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Don't Wake Me: the powerful new play by Rahila Gupta

May 15, 2013, 5:25 am
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Last week in Liverpool I was privileged to chair a panel about the international women’s movement called 50 Billion Shades of Feminism. One of my guests was the playwright, Southall Black Sisters activist and Guardian commentator Rahila Gupta. Gupta was a stranger, although obviously a political ally, so I have no vested interest in the splurge of praise and promotion that follows.

First, some background: Rahila Gupta’s book Enslaved: The New British Slavery is one of the most shocking and important works of topical investigation and testimony I’ve read. It uncovers the reality of modern-day slavery and (strongly gendered) abuse, violation and exploitation happening within the UK, tragically unnoticed and unlooked-for by the majority of people. As the publishers state powerfully,
They live amongst us, invisible, stripped of their passports and money, locked in cramped rooms, physically and psychologically abused. Britainis once again home to thousands of slaves - they reach our shores via unimaginably perilous crossings, are confined to horrendous working lives, and forgotten. Very few ever have a chance of talking about their appalling experiences. Rahila Gupta seeks out five slaves and persuades them to tell us their disturbing stories in this compelling and revealing book.
The testimonies include those of a pregnant very young girl from Sierra Leonewho is used in a London house as an imprisoned domestic worker, a trafficked Russian teenager forced into prostitution, a religiously devout Somalian woman forced to become a prostitute to survive and a young Punjabi woman in an abusive forced marriage. They are in a country they don’t know, whose language they might not know, unaware of their human rights or how to formally claim and defend those rights. They have been stripped of all rights by their abusers and live in fear of returning to the extreme poverty, sexual violence, war or persecution they experienced in their home countries, knowing that the gangs or individuals who trafficked and exploit them here will target (or threaten to target) them and their families there.

Rahila Gupta’s work in all fields has been about the importance of telling the truth exactly where people are too discomfited by reality to look or listen – and she does so in a way which is beautifully written, powerful, riveting and unforgettable. She co-scripted the film Provoked, which starred Aishwarya Rai and Miranda Richardson, and dealt with the case of an abused Asian woman who set her violent husband alight

When I heard that Gupta’s new play Don’t Wake Me: The Ballad of Nihal Armstrong was debuting in Londonand then moving on to Edinburgh I couldn’t let it pass without writing something.

Flyer for Don't Wake Me, which will be coming to The Cockpit in Central London
after selected dates at the Chickenshed in North London

Written by Gupta, directed by Guy Slater and starring Jaye Griffiths (who’s starred in Silent Witness, Coronation Street, Criminal Justice), Don’t Wake Me is based on real events. It’s about the power of a mother’s love and determination and of a baby boy’s incredible joy, wit and will, in the face of life’s obstacles and others’ cynicism. This is their story:
After a difficult conception Nihal’s arrival into the world is a terrifying ordeal for his mother. During a traumatic delivery, attended by ‘cold-eyed’ midwives, Nihal has to be pulled back from the brink of death. Three months on, the doctor tells her that her baby has cerebral palsy and will never learn how to walk, talk, read or write. 
However, as Nihal grows, his mother recognises that inside his seemingly helpless body is a bright, sensitive, spirited boy. She is forced to wage battle with the system, a system unable to accept that flowers can bloom in a desert – triumphantly demonstrated when Nihal learns to communicate fluently in his own unique style 
This is the intensely dramatic, moving story of a mother’s tireless battles against prejudice and ignorance and her inspiring victories in her struggle for her son’s rights. A story of loss, grief, and joy, leavened by Nihal's sense of humour and the heroic human spirit.

EVENT DETAILS:
  • Don’t Wake Me will be previewing at the Chickenshed Theatre in North London from 22nd May 2013 - 25 May 2013. For details click here.
  • It will then be on at the Cockpit Theatre in Central London from 3rd June until 22nd June 2013. For details click here.
  • The official press night for Don’t Wake Me will be at the Cockpit on Monday 3rd June at 7pm. For press please contact Sue Amaradivakara on 1001sca@gmail.com
  • It will then be on at the Gilded Balloon in Edinburghduring the 2013 Edinburgh Fringe Festival from Monday 5 August - Sunday 25 August. For details click here.


Jaye Griffiths, who stars in Don't Wake Me. Behind her is an image
of Nihal Armstrong

The Nihal Armstrong Trust, set up in memory of Nihal, provides grants to families of children with cerebral palsy to enable them to purchase cutting edge equipment and services not funded by local authorities. 
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Laugh ‘til you cry, cry ‘til you laugh: The Small Hours by Susie Boyt

May 16, 2013, 1:35 pm
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No good deed goes unpunished. That is the dark conclusion of Boyt’s brilliant tragicomedy of charitable intentions and damaged histories. Heroine Harriet Mansfield is a blousy woman of big emotions and large scale, strong in intention, rich in feeling, emphatic in speech, full-bodied both literally and spiritually. She wants to open a nursery in a poncy part of town and conjure up a perfect girlsworld of harvest baskets, under-fives woodworking sessions and dress-up games, far from the twinge of WiFi and the smell of crisps. Her desire is to be Dream Proxy Mommy to a cohort of privileged little girls who’ll remember the institution for the rest of their (consequently) happy lives. It does not take the godfather of psychoanalysis to work out that this is because she herself had an unhappy childhood, but the forensic way in which Boyt explores Harriet’s karmically restitutional urge is sheer genius.

Using money from an inheritance and wordlessly encouraged by her enigmatic shrink – Boyt is brilliant on the agonies of successful psychotherapy in the early pages of the novel – Harriet opens the nursery. It’s a success: to break even you only need half a dozen pupils if they’re all rich. Then stuff happens.

Though providing much delight, in both sincerely heart-warming and satirically keen ways, the nursery is not the locus of the meaningful action. That occurs on the periphery and concerns Harriet’s parents and brother. The crucial, toxic events of Harriet’s life actually happened in the past and it’s an indication of Boyt’s excellence that the reader, so caught up in the jolly romp of Harriet-the-schoolmistress, does not notice the foreboding elements encroaching from the outskirts until it’s too late. 

The Small Hours, as the title indicates, is about what happens in the gaps between our survival strategies, the long nights when the nursery is not full of children, the weekends when Harriet’s professional acumen is unneeded, the intervals between lessons and the moments before and after grand endeavours. It explores the generational after-effects of abuse, the never-ending fractal of consequences, the way adults betray children – and, of course, the positive way in which damaged adults vow to nurture future generations.

And at the same time it’s really funny.

The psychological precision of this novel is breathtaking. Boyt’s greatest accomplishment is her creation of Harriet, an eccentric, humorous and perceptive adult who is humiliated by the cruelty of others yet whose own sincerity remains undiminished. Harriet understands her own pathology and sees herself as a wounded healer, a pained Pied Piper leading Holland Park’s children out of the darkness and into the light. Her striving nature, friendliness, energy, sensuality, emotional sensitivity and crushed yet accurate intelligence make her a heroine amongst children. Somehow, they can tell that she is benign. Yet her desire to give love overwhelms her more circumspect adult peers. She is not afraid of embarrassing herself and yet, funnily, this largeness of soul embarrasses others. And so it goes on in a never-ending loop of delicious comic irony.

Apart from the nice staff members at the nursery many of the adults in the Small Hours are spiritually ugly, emotionally mean and morally poor, particularly those who’ve benefited from the greatest financial privilege and exhibit the most outward stylishness. Being two-faced themselves, they mistrust Harriet’s transparency. She in turn is acutely aware of the way her grand candour makes the timid feel awkward and the asinine feel superior. And their perverted and agonising misinterpretation of her successfully makes her self-conscious and therefore ungainly.

Part of the clever pain of The Small Hours is watching Harriet ask plainly honest questions, offer love and seek answers only to have her wholesomeness met with irritation, contempt and aversion by those who are just as damaged yet far more defensive than she is. As I read the novel I kept thinking, Harriet thinks of herself as huge and desperate and clumsy. I bet, if I were to meet her, she would be the opposite. Harriet’s brother, an uptight tightwad, has projected his own trauma onto her; everything she does riles him, because he is riled by his own past, of which she is a reminder. Because he never shows his emotions, when she shows a tiny bit of hers they seem elephantine by comparison. 

And I haven’t even started on the mother. Or the dad.

Finally, every sentence of this novel is at once a bitingly witty summation and a deadpan indictment of the brutality of life. If I quoted the sharpest bits I’d wind up reproducing the whole thing. I haven’t, deliberately. Go and buy it.


The Small Hours by Susie Boyt is published by Virago but why don't you go straight to Amazon instead?
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Indian court rules that you can’t hold the developing world to ransom when it comes to medicines that would save millions of lives

April 2, 2013, 11:07 am
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I just saw this on the BBC and had to cover it because it highlights some of the many issues surrounding patients’ access to effective long term medical care in the developing world, illustrating how the humanitarian issue of global health can become subject to issues of profit, politicking and power.

The Swiss pharmaceutical company Novartis has had its patent application for a newer version of an already-available, expensive and effective leukaemia drug called Glivec rejected by the Indian Supreme Court. Novartis had been trying for six years to obtain the patent, but the court ruled that patent status requires and recognises clear innovation resulting in proven increased efficacy  rather than minimal adjustments to an existing product.

This ruling sends a strong message about the potential for patients in developing countries to access affordable medicine. First, it prevents large, international pharmaceutical companies from protecting much-needed medicines through patents which result in product exclusivity, lack of competition and the levying of a high sale price by the drug’s ‘owners’. Second, the court’s ruling indicates support for the manufacture of non-brand-name copies of the drug by generic companies in India(a major medical manufacturer serving many developing world countries). These can be sold at a much lower price to meet widescale medical need. For example, Glivec costs nearly thirty times as much, per patient, per year, as the generic version of the same drug manufactured in India.

As Avert, the international anti AIDS/HIV charity, explains:
A generic drug is an identical copy (bioequivalent) of a brand name (or proprietary) drug. Generics are exactly the same as their branded counterparts in dosage form, safety, strength, route of administration, quality, performance characteristics and intended use. The notable difference between the two is the price.
 While this week’s ruling concerns a leukaemia drug, its principle can be extended to treatments for HIV and AIDS medicines. India’s manufacture and export of affordable HIV medicines (and other generic drugs) has benefited millions of sufferers in the developing world, most notably to treat AIDS epidemics in Africa.

The competition amongst generic manufacturers, consciousness-raising among global health advocates and close collaboration with pharmaceutical companies have resulted in falling prices, which have put medicines – especially specific treatments for HIV and AIDS – into the reach of many millions more people in poorer regions.

At the heart of the issue in this particular ruling is patients’ right to affordable treatment. The right to be healed, where healing is available and has been proven effective, should not be denied to a sufferer because they are poor.

What is chilling, however, is Novartis’s response. In a TV interview after the ruling, the company’s vice chairman (and MD in India), Ranjit Shahani, hinted that the decision would have a negative impact on Novartis’s plans for investing in India, doing further research and development or introducing new drugs to India.

This is, effectively, a blackmail threat*: allow us to keep our vital drugs exclusive and expensive or we will freeze you out of the game completely, new research will grind to a halt, new medicine access (no matter how inaccessible, discriminatory and unaffordable) will cease altogether and millions will die.

The fact that large companies are willing to try and play tactical threat-games with people’s lives is disturbing and amoral. If international pharmaceutical corporations cared about people suffering major illnesses it would back the democratisation, universalisation and affordability of treatments and demonstrate through its actions that it values curing people more than making a profit, because human beings are more important than money.

Further reading:
-        Sarah Boseley has covered this particular case very clearly and thoroughly here in The Guardian
-        There’s a clear BBC new reportwith a very interesting analysis by Indian journalist Shilpa Kannan on the Glivec case.
-        The international AIDS/HIV charity Avert has comprehensively set out the basics when it comes to costing, manufacturing and supplying treatment and medication for sufferers.
-        Avert has also produced an interesting report on the history of, challenges to and ways forward for universal access to HIV/AIDS treatment, if you click here.
-        There are extremely thorough reports on the provision of AIDS/HIV medicines in the developing world, produced by the Interagency Coalition on AIDS and Development (ICAD). Click here and then click on the Our Work and Publications Tab.

…And, to add my feminist twist, there’s also a very pertinent feature on the link between HIV/AIDS and gender inequality:
Many of the social and economic barriers that stand in the way of effective HIV prevention, treatment, support and care for people living with HIV are the same barriers that impede access to comprehensive sexual and reproductive health programs and services. For instance, the circumstances that can lead to unintended pregnancies can also lead to infection with HIV and other STIs. Sex is the common denominator. In societies where cultural and gender norms tightly restrict the sexual and reproductive lives and choices of women and men, the risk for both unintended pregnancy and HIV infection is greatest.
Jennifer Kitts and Nicci Stein, ICAD

Bidisha is a 2013 Fellow for the International Reporting Project. She is reporting on issues of global health and development. 



* and one which is common in the rhetoric of many large companies – I don’t want to single out Novartis for blame in behaving like all its peers
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Indonesia is just one example: introducing the International Year of Water Co-Operation

April 5, 2013, 9:54 am
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Image (c) UN
World Water Day was just a few weeks ago, on 22ndMarch, and this time around it’s part of 2013’s special International Year of Water Co-Operation. While I’ll write more about water, health and development in coming months, the poster below gives some impression of just how many individuals, informal groups, charities and organisations have been active in the fight to provide universal, accessible, clean and safe water for all the world’s population on World Water Day. 

Image (c) UN
At the same time, world leaders are meeting throughout the year to seek ways to co-operate and fund initiatives to make these goals a reality for everyone. On World Water Day itself there was a High Level Forum at the Hague and a High-Level Interactive Dialogue (love those crushingly literal antieuphemisms!) at the UN headquarters in New York and other summit meetings are planned in Stockholm, Tajikistan and Norwaythroughout the year.

To give some idea of the considerations and challenges which arise when looking at water and development I want to take USAID’s work in Indonesia as a case study, based on recently released details of their initiatives there as part of the $33 million, five-year IUWASH (Indonesia Urban Water, Sanitation and Hygiene) Project. In support of the country’s Millennium Development Goal (MDG) regarding improvements in water provision and sanitation, IUWASH reaches out across more than 50 municipalities, helping up to 2 million people in urban areas access safe water and improving sanitation for many others

According to USAID,
  • Around 40% of Indonesia’s urban households have access to clean water
  • Just over 50% have basic sanitation
  • In all, 75% do not have “adequate sanitation”
  • Poorer families are disproportionately affected – so, as in so many places, there is a gap in privilege, resources, access, opportunities and advocacy (that is, the clout to be heard and make social changes) between the richest and poorest. 

The principal barrier to safe, piped water in urban areas in Indonesia is financial: the installation and connection charge of between $150 and $300 might be as much as three months’ an average earner’s salary – USAID cite a typical example of a vegetable seller and mother of two from Jiyu, earning $2-$3 a day which barely covers essentials as it is. For those without access to piped water, water must be collected and carried from the nearest river or reservoir, a task which is extremely arduous, time-consuming and inefficient. One person can only bring as much water as they can carry. This must be shared amongst the family and amongst cooking, bathing and clothes-washing requirements.

A further difficulty is that in the implementation of a piped water network, a number of processes, vested interests and various groups must be aligned. Strategy, goals, budgets, funding, decisions and policy come from the government, with or without the collaboration of other governments, agencies or funds internationally; geographical planning, irrigation, building and the establishment of utilities, sanitation and facilities will all be handled by private businesses and so on.

Photo (c) USAID Indonesia project

With access achieved, the next issue to tackle is sanitation. USAID estimates that in Indonesia

  • only about 2% of urban households are connected to sewerage systems
  • up to 18% of urban dwellers must defecate openly, without facilities for the removal of waste
Here, the solution is consciousness-raising about sanitation issues and good practice, people’s unity in improving conditions for everyone and the importance of local leadership in effecting change among multiple households, encouraging families to build improved sanitation facilities like latrines, practice good hygiene (which can be as simple, but effective, as hand-washing, medicated cleaning products and the separate of areas for different tasks). The swift and obvious success of these often-simple measures – such as a steep decrease in rates of diarrhoea and an increase in general health – often inspires communities to go further in terms of grassroots local development, towards recycling and composting.

This is achieved through all parties pulling their weight. IUWASH and similar initiatives must bring together all these different parties to ensure long-term planning and delivery and create a new, different, sustainable future.

Bidisha is a 2013 Fellow for the International Reporting Project. She is reporting on issues of global health and development. 
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Help the mother, help the child, secure the future: maternal and child health in India

April 28, 2013, 3:45 pm
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Photo (c) Children In Need India


Like many people ‘of colour’, I am occasionally subject to a random dousing of imprecise and pejorative cultural clichés by ignorant people with a superiority complex, just like a delicate lotus blossom caught in a balmy, allegorical, toxic monsoon shower.
Woman in publishing, at literary festival: “What do you do?”
Me: “At the moment I’m working with the Gates Foundation and JohnsHopkinsUniversity, reporting on international development? No, before you ask, I haven’t met the Gates’s. The next thing I’m doing is on maternal health, I think. It’s really interesting.”
Woman in publishing: “Oh! That’s so interesting because the other day I was thinking to myself, I had trouble with my two pregnancies and if I’d been having my babies in the developing world, I wouldn’t have survived. Do you know [random British Asian woman in publishing PR]? Because you look like her and you remind me of her.”
Me: ???
I have no doubt that I in no way resemble the one other Asian person Publishing Woman has met in her working life. Poor PW, we met for 10 minutes out of nowhere and she couldn’t stop talking about race, refugees, poverty and the pathetic ills of the ‘developing world’ – it’s like she had racial Tourettes. And had I been able to recover from the speechlessness that afflicted me at the crucial moment, despite the fact that I talk for a living, I would have asked her which country exactly in ‘the developing world’ (which bigots usually take to mean everywhere or possibly anywhere from Senegal, across Libya, Somalia, Congo, down to Mozambique, then up through Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, definitely India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and then possibly through to rural China perhaps… and maybe Burma, or rural Indonesia…and maybe also acrossways to some countries in South and Latin America, oh and the Caribbean islands maybe too, and gosh even some parts of Greece?) she meant, and then which region in which country.

The whole thing – or rather, her gloating and ignorance – made me think of an article I wrote a long while back, about Children in Need India. I described ‘two Indias’: that of the extremely numerous privileged middle class, who have the finest education, prospects, family support, influence, connections and healthcare; and that of the poorest, who despite the general dynamism, ambition and industry of today’s India still suffer due to lack of access to healthcare, education, influence, rights and justice. So often, it is only the second Indiathat the wider world sees. It pains me, as a British Indian, that the rest of the world is blind to the incredible humour, energy, intelligence, broadness and enlightenment I see everywhere in India. In many ways, as a woman I find Indian culture much more sisterly and infinitely less misogynistic, judgemental, brittle, sleazy, objectifying, ageist-sexist and dollybirdish than British culture – but that’s a subject for another article.

Still, when it comes to society’s least advantaged, there are certain issues which cannot be ignored. India has a population of around 1 billion people and poverty, hunger, illness, gender and class injustice, lack of access, lack of rights, abuse, exploitation and geographical isolation from sources of both power and assistance (such as healthcare) are disproportionately weighted against those with the least. In short, despite India’s great achievements and many distinguished citizens, there are still an awful lot of poor, disempowered, ill and hungry people.

Looking back through Children in Need India’s work since I wrote that first 'two Indias' article, it is clear that solving the most fundamental problems must start from birth. I was intrigued by CINI because it started up with just two clinics for deprived children in Kolkata, where my mother’s family are from, and has since grown into a much larger organisation operating in West Bengal.

They present some sobering statistics, from Unicef studies:
  • Infant mortality is highest in India than anywhere else in the world. According to Unicef’s 2010 figures, the majority of the 6,000 children who die in India every day, the majority are from preventable causes.
  • Almost a half of all children under the age of five in India are clinically malnourished (Unicef study, January 2012)
  • According to Unicef’s 2005 figures women in India are 80 times more likely to die during childbirth than in the UK due to lack of access to basic healthcare and monitoring during pregnancy for poorer women, as well as malnutrition and anaemia, which are linked.
There are further statistics – all, sadly, predictable – relating to rates of child labour, the possible consequence of exploitation and abuse of children who labour, the young age of girls’ marriage in rural areas, relatively low rates of child education (education in India is now free for all but uniforms and books can be expensive) and the knock-on effect in terms of adult literacy and, of course, gender equality.

This month the Wilson Centre in America held an extremely wide-ranging conference on Maternal Health in India: Emerging Priorities. There is a brilliant sum-up and full footage of the conference here. Taking place across New Delhi, Boston and Washington, the speakers argued strongly for the issue of maternal health to be seen in the context of multiple underlying social, health and economic factors, pointing out the importance of various key factors. First, more attention must be paid to women's health after giving birth - focusing on morbidity, not just mortality - and ensuring that all of a woman's health needs, from family planning to sexual health, are met in the same (geographical) place by the same people or organisation. Second, there must be an understanding of he importance of family planning: fewer pregnancies, with longer gaps in between, are better for women's physical and mental health and the health of their babies. And third, the importance of post-partum health care and sustained treatment cannot be underestimated.

Underlying all of this are the effects of gender inequality on women's health: early marriages leading to early and numerous births; violence against women; the underprivileging of female family members when it comes to feeding/serving, leaving women with the worst and least food (leading to malnutrition and anaemia) and the most and hardest labour within the house and beyond it. Class is also a powerful influence on Indian women's access to healthcare: disenfranchisement due to caste or other low class status is serious and widespread.

When it comes to healthcare, the best work is done through direct outreach, local engagement and the creation of long term relationships and structures: in one film, CINI describes visiting people door to door, inviting local people to meetings, the setting up of ‘panchayat’ council meeting where citizens speak up about what they need and are also educated and informed of their rights. In this way, the fundamentals – health, education, nutrition – are slowly strengthened. One intriguing project, which kills two birds with one stone (so to speak… actually it gives life to two birds with one stone…) is the ‘Nutrimix’ nutritional project: this is a pre-mixed nutritional food supplement which benefits Under-5s, which is sold by women to their local communities at a low price, but with a  small profit. It incentivises the women to sell and benefits them financially, while also aiding child health.

Other solutions are more traditional, like drop-in clinics giving advice on prenatal care, nutrition, vaccinations (one doctor talks positively about the success of the polio vaccination project at her clinic – once mothers see how simple it is, they are bringing as many local children as they can), reproductive health and more. Still, the strong theme of gender inequality, sexual exploitation and hypocrisy cuts through all of these issues. The clinic deals with STI’s, among other things, and it is left tactfully open as to where the STIs come from (hint: it’s not the women). Many of the women having babies are under-nourished because, even in a generally poor family, the men and boys will be privileged and the mother will eat last. In the film, one doctor at a baby clinic gestures to a patient and points out that the woman (and by consequence her baby) is under-nourished and in frail health because, due to a lack of contraception and consideration from her husband, she has too many children, who she can’t feed and is visibly too exhausted to look after.

Still, it is these same women who are finding a voice. From the seemingly small act of seeking and receiving healthcare treatment they are empowered to take a stand not only in their local area – one example is of women going door-to-door and educating their neighbours about the importance of environmental health and sanitary local conditions, which help to prevent the spread of germs – but also speaking out against the marrying-off of girls at a young age and insisting on the right for all children, whether they are boys or girls, to be educated. They are also empowered to demand safe and adequate healthcare. As one woman says: “We also want all mothers to be able to give birth in a hospital, without the risks of a home birth.”







Bidisha is a 2013 Fellow for the International Reporting Project. She is reporting on issues of global health and development. 
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Extradited to a future of torture: the reality of solitary confinement and a screening of Valarie Kaur's film Worst of the Worst

May 8, 2013, 8:41 am
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UK premiere of film about the Connecticut Supermax prison that houses two extradited British nationals. With Amnesty International & Special Guests from the USA Solitary Watch.
Flagging up an upcoming special event entitled “Extradited to a future of torture: the reality of Solitary Confinement in the USA”, hosted by the International State Crime Initiative at King’s College. The event will feature the UK premiere of Worst of the Worst (link takes you to the trailer), a new 30 minute film made by Valarie Kaur with the Yale Visual Law Project. Valarie Kaur, is an award-winning filmmaker, civil rights advocate, and interfaith leader based in Connecticut who wanted to make this film on Supermax prisons after visiting Guantanamo Bay. She is the founder of Yale Visual Law which was launched in 2010 with two primary goals in mind: to create a cutting-edge pedagogical space where law students could be trained in the art of visual advocacy and to produce well-researched, professional documentary films on legal and policy issues. See the trailer online by clicking here. The film tour the UK with dates TBC in Scotland, Wales, North England in Summer 2013.

Worst of the Worst exposes the physically and psychologically abusive conditions of confinement in the Northern Correctional Institution in Somers, Connecticut, the prison that houses extradited British citizens Talha Ahsan and Babar Ahmad.

Talha Ahsan is an award-winning British muslim poet and translator. He was been detained over 6 years without trial, charge or prima facie evidence on the controversial 2003 US-UK Extradition treaty on allegations relating to association with an obsolete foreign jihad website from 1997-2002 covering Bosnia, Chechnya and Afghanistan. He was extradited to the USA on 5th October with his co-defendent Babar Ahmad and is now in solitary confinement in Connecticut at the Northern Correctional Institution. The trial will be in October 2013. Full details on the case and family campaign: www.freetalha.org

Babar Ahmad is Talha’s co-defendant. Before he was extradited, he was detained without trial for over 8 years, the longest period of detention without trial faced by any prisoner in British history. An e-petition to have his trial in the UK gathered over 149,000 signatures. See the site Free Babar Ahmad for more information.

Special guests from the USA James Ridgeway and Jean Casella, directors of Solitary Watch, and Amnesty International’s Tessa Murphy will discuss the issues in a human rights framework. James Ridgeway and media editor Jean Casella co-founded Solitary Watch in 2009, in order to "bring the widespread practice of solitary confinement out of the shadows and into the light of the public square." Their work has helped to fuel a growing national movement opposing the use of solitary in U.S. prisons, jails, juvenile facilities, and immigrant detention centers. 

The Amnesty International report on Supermax prisons by speaker Tessa Murphy can be read here. In a 2012 statement of concern about Talha Ahsan & Babar Ahmad’s extradition, Amnesty International noted: 
There is ample evidence in the USA and elsewhere that prolonged confinement to a cell with social isolation can cause serious physical and psychological harm. Concerns about such impact are heightened with regard to individuals, like some of those extradited, who have pre-existing medical conditions or mental disabilities. (Full statement available here).
Talha Ahsan’s new creative writing from Supermax prison will be read by his brother Hamja Ahsan. Writings from other prisoners in solitary confinement will be read by poet and playwright Avaes Mohammad.

Special guest James Ridgeway said :
Supermax prisons and solitary confinement units are America's domestic black sites, these are places where genuine torture takes place. 
People in the UK should care about what happens in American supermax prisons, just as they care about what happens at Guantanamo... [because] British nationals are now being extradited to the U.S. to face decades of torture in solitary confinement.
Aseem Mehta, co-director of Worst of the Worst, said :
In making the film, we listened to all of the actors whose lives were touched by supermax - the inmates in solitary, the guards who report for duty each day, the policymakers and officials who oversee the facility, the architect whose legacy has become the prison, the family members and friends whose loved ones are inside, the lawyers and advocates who navigate the law that governs the prison's logic. We came away with the conclusion that the institution harms everyone who it touches, that everyone who enters Northern ultimately leaves damaged.
The event host is Dr. Ian Patel of International State Crime Intitiative.  Dr. Patel is in the law department at King's College London. He specialises in criminal justice, criminal law, and international human rights. He is a fellow at the International State Crime Initiative. His recent article on Talha Ahsan case and prolonged solitary confinement was published in the New Statesman here.

Further resources:




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Novelist Kishwar Desai's Sea of Innocence: women, India, safety, secrets and violence in paradise

May 8, 2013, 2:18 pm
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I wanted to support The Sea of Innocence, the Costa-winning novelist Kishwar Desai's latest book, which will be published by Simon & Schuster on 30th May in hardback at £12.99. The text below is from the press release - but I love Desai's novels for their brilliant combination of urgent topicality, taut plotting, strong style and an unforgettably clever, funny and resourceful heroine.



Kishwar Desai sprang onto the literary scene in 2010 with Witness The Night, which introduced the characters of the tough, cool social-worker-cum-detective heroine Simran Singh, who was investigating a murder case and tackling the issue of female infanticide. This powerful debut went on to win a Costa and was also longlisted for The DSC Prize for South Asian Literature, The Man Asian Literary Prize and The Impac Award.

Desai’s second novel, Origins of Love, saw Simran travel between Delhi and London in a story involving the exploitative, largely unregulated and hugely profitable international surrogacy industry. It
received rave reviews and helped spark a global debate - which I wrote about in this New Humanist piece.

In her third novel, The Sea of Innocence, Desai’s heroine Simran is holidaying in Goa with her daughter when she is sent a video of a blonde teenager alone with a group of Indian men. The teenager is missing and Simran knows she must act, and fast, in order to save her. Everyone seems to know what has happened to her, but no-one will talk. Soon Simran herself is targeted to force her into silence and her Goan paradise becomes a living nightmare.

Like all Desai’s novels, The Sea of Innocence is a gripping detective story, but it is also the exploration of a serious social problem. In 2011, 21 British Nationals died in Goa and the book reflects on the infamous case of Scarlett Keeling, who was raped and murdered there 5 years ago, and the recent gang rape in Delhi. Desai looks at the role of women in India. She explores how, in the age of globalization, such issues affect all of us.

Kishwar Desai is an author, broadcaster and journalist who splits her time between Delhi, Goa and London. She will be in the UK around publication and will be available for interviews and to write features.

NOTES:

  • For further information contact Hannah Corbett; Hannah.corbett@simonandschuster.co.uk
  • ...or Gina Rozner at Giant Rooster PR: Gina@giantroosterpr.co.uk




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Tracing the inkline of beauty and history: Delhi Old And New by Kavita Iyengar

May 13, 2013, 6:27 am
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First of all, please Bloomsbury can we have a UK edition of this book so British-based art lovers and readers needn't order from India and wait for shipping? [EDIT: Aha! It is now available on Amazon here.]

Because I've just discovered a new, absolutely beautiful artist's tribute to Delhi, one of India's most historic, complex, vibrant and inspiring cities. Kavita Iyengar's Delhi: Old and New is a stunning edition of original, fiercely observed and intricately traced images of the city, at once delicate and utterly fresh. Iyengar's images give the reader a strong visual tour of Delhi, yet are themselves so crisp and classy that the book feels timeless, lifted out of the daily bustle of cosmopolitan life. It does so by focusing on representing multiple Delhis through the centuries, via those architectural and cityscaped parts that still remain, from ancient temples to mosques, forts, palaces, colonial buildings (thanks, chaps) and the "New New Delhi" of post-Independence India. In Delhi, Old and New the vast weight of history is here made both accessible and inexpressibly gorgeous.

Full cover spread - click to enlarge

This is a book for everyone who loves art, or loves India, or both. And for those who want more of the exquisite works, here's a privileged look:



All images by Kavita Iyengar

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Persephone Speaks: The forgotten women of Bosnia

May 13, 2013, 9:28 am
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I am urging everyone to back a major new documentary by the brilliant film-maker Ivana Ivkovic Kelley, whose project Persephone Speaks focuses on the use of rape as a war strategy. The film follows a survivor's quest to shed light on the international community's failure to acknowledge the effects this crime has on women's lives, long after the war has ended. There are only 10 days left before the fundraising campaign is over.



The project is more timely than ever, given that global awareness of this issue is rising. It's also amazing to witness the power of film-making on global politics, with William Hague stating that his consciousness was raised by Angelina Jolie's hard-hitting 2012 film In The Land of Blood and Honey, which focuses on the issue. That feature was a sombre and extremely admirable fictionalisation of real events, strongly influenced by actual witness and testimony. 

For readers who want to know more about the global issue of rape in war (although, I should add, rape and all forms of gendered sexual violence and gendered abuse are absolutely endemic in peacetime societies too, everywhere in the world, regardless of colour, class, religion, culture, language and hemisphere) then I strong recommend the Women Under Siege Project, which provide extremely gritty and exhaustive documentation, testimony and research. A trigger warning strongly applies. 

Persephone Speaks shows a survivor tracing and confronting perpetrators, testifying to the reality and aftermath of rape and seeking formal justice in the international community and courts system. As Kelley says, she wishes to
...acknowledge the effects this crime has on women's lives, long after the war has ended. Females are nonstop targets during wartime, as demonstrated by the mass rapes implemented as a policy of genocide during the Bosnian war. Because this atrocity is grossly ignored by the international community and international tribunals, this film revisits one survivor, Bakira, who continues to fight for justice on behalf of others all over the world.   
From her tiny smoke-filled office on the shrapnel-damaged outskirts of Sarajevo, to her monthly sojourns to the Hague, her goal is for perpetrators to be brought to justice. To this day, war rape survivors continue to join her group, finally sharing their stories with this woman who will ensure their testimonies are heard in the courts in Sarajevo or the Hague.  
 In many cases, the perpetrators are either awaiting trial or have been rewarded by the Serbian government for successfully running a "camp", often in the form of a promotion within the local police force. We have witnessed incidents of this same "reward" behavior in similar conflicts around the world. In situations such as these, many survivors have expressed anger, fear, and shock, especially when they see their attacker, years later, in high level positions or vacationing beside them on the Adriatic coast.  
Bakira... sets out to find where the perpetrators, named in numerous testimonies, now live, subsequently providing this evidence to the Hague and other courts.
Kelley and her team have initiated a Kickstarter campaign to raise $12,000 which will enable the completion of Persephone Speaks by autumn so that it can hit the international film festival circuit when it debuts. More than $8,000 has already been pledged (disclosure: I pledged some after reading the Women's Views on News feature - Kelley is a stranger to me) but according to Kickstarter custom the full target must be reached, or nothing.

Please help. In the words of the director,
It is through projects such as these that light is shed on human rights issues. The continued treatment of women around the world, especially during times of conflict, needs to be heard through as many channels as possible. Unfortunately, war rape survivors are often seen as a problem, a by-product of war that needs to be swept under the rug. Our work will be done when the world comes together to ensure female victims of war are not forgotten and the perpetrators are brought to justice.

Be a part of making Persephone Speaks happen by becoming a backer here and showing your support on the documentary's Facebook page here.

You might also be interested in finding out about Women for Women International's March of Peace from 5th-12th July 2013, which follows a 120 km route through Bosnia and Herzegovina to Srebrenica - the exact route taken by refugees of the war.
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Beyond the Wall: Writing a Path Through Palestine

December 31, 2013, 4:30 pm
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"An unflinching portrait of life in the West Bank in the 21st Century."

Andrew Kelly, The Observer

I am delighted to celebrate the publication of my fourth book, Beyond the Wall: Writing A Path Through Palestine (Seagull Books/Chicago University Press),which I discuss in a long interview with For Books' Sake. Read Part One here, read Part Two here and Part Three here. There's also a long interview on TYCI and another, by Julie Tomlin, on Digital Women. Further press mentions, hat-tips and interviews have included The New Statesman, World Literature Today, The Mancunion, The List, Platform 51, La Carpa del Feo, Book Elf, The Boar, film-maker and writer Simon Guerrier's site, New Humanist, Ideas Tap,The Asian Writer, Variety, The Student Journals, Spiked, Newsclick India, Women's Views on News and The Observer.

Beyond the Wall was launched with a panel event at The Mosaic Rooms, entitled Writing A Path Through International Affairs. Journalist Susannah Tarbush has written an excellent report on the event, here. I was joined by Anna Blundy, former Times Moscow correspondent and author of a series of novels about war correspondent Faith Zanetti, inspired by Marie Colvin; poet, economist and novelist Nitasha Kaul, whose debut novel ‘Residue’ was shortlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize and who has written extensively about global economics, Kashmir, India and Bhutan; and Rosie Garthwaite, who began her reporting career straight out of university and the army in Basra, Iraq, and has worked as a reporter and producer for the BBC, Reuters and Al-Jazeera. Her book How to Avoid Being Killed in a Warzone is a survivors’ guide to staying alive in combat territory.

Beyond the Wall: Writing A Path Through Palestine is a sharp, immediate reportage published by Seagull Books/Chicago University Press on 15th May 2012. It is the latest release in Seagull’s series of short Manifestos for the Twenty-First Century, which tackle current issues in international political affairs. The publisher’s page can be found here and the Amazon UK page, which has a little bit more blurb, is here.

Beyond the Wall: Writing A Path Through Palestine is "an unflinching portrait of life in the West Bank in the 21st Century" (The Observer), seen through the eyes of its activists, its ordinary citizens, its children, its population of international aid workers, reporters and foreign visitors. From my first experience of the caprices and cruelties of checkpoint culture upon entering the West Bank to a final confrontation with the army in Silwan I report, reflect upon and analyse multiple aspects of life in an occupied territory. Covering Bethlehem, Hebron, Jerusalem, Ramallah, Nablus and Nazareth, speaking to children in the refugee camps at Balata and degree students in the lecture halls of Birzeit University, I share observations of Palestinians from all walks of life. I was both shocked by the behaviour of the military and circumspect about many aspects of Palestinian culture. My final vision balances faith in the vigour of the country's young activists, shock at the perverse effects of military occupation on the mentality of the occupied and the occupiers alike and sorrow at seeing the frustration and anger of the country's youngest citizens.
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The Story Ritual

December 31, 2013, 2:44 pm
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The end of 2013 saw the launch of Flight Press, a new publisher of short fiction. Its first collection, Edgeways, collated the winning and shortlisted entries in the 2013 Spread the Word short story prize which I judged alongside Courttia Newland and Tania Hershman. The Edgeways anthology also featured a new short story by me, entitled The Comforting of Children, and this essay on the ritual of reading short fiction.

Everyone knows the story ritual. It begins with ‘Once upon a time’ and it ends, in childhood at least, with ‘And they all lived happily ever after.’

As we get older the stories become more complex, more shadowy and circumspect. Perhaps yearning for some comfort and familiarity we turn back to the fairytales, fables and adventure stories we knew from childhood, only to realise that even they contain striking ambiguities and subversions. Bluebeard: wife killer. The wolf in Little Red Riding Hood: murderer preying on the elderly, human eater, sartorial necrophiliac and cross-dresser, child groomer. The prince in Cinderella: foot fetishist. The prince in Rapunzel: hair fetishist. The prince in Sleeping Beauty: rapist. Snow White: female masochist who finds happiness as seven men’s domestic drudge.

Even these stories, with their generic, Disney-colonised contemporary names, arise from rituals of recounting adventures, creation myths and folklore which long predate written culture and are strongly echoed by countless narratives all over the world. They are full of death, betrayal, selfishness, desire, heroism, ambition, bloody-mindedness, defiance, friendship, sadness, enmity: the stuff of life. The stories embody near-universal hopes and fears, provide escape, give warning, reprove or reward certain desires. They reflect both the time of their telling (and retelling) and the universality of our own impulses.

The story ritual isn’t about whether the narrative is committed to paper or to the air and the ears. It’s not even about literature, as such. Journalists and news crews pursue emerging stories, fashion spreads in high-end magazines are referred to as stories, private investigators try to get to the bottom of a story and witnesses of crimes give their stories to the police. Con artists have their stories too, often very elaborate ones. Part of the ritual is that you follow a story, if it’s a good one, all the way to the end. The mark of a rich tale, whether it’s epigrammatic or epic, is that you want to know what happens next. And if that ending is weak, the reader feels not irritated but actually betrayed. We are galled and disappointed, as if we were set up in good faith and then sold a dud.

I’m always intrigued by nurseries and prep schools that have a soft-furnished, quiet, special story corner, as if stories deserve their own place as well as their own time in which to flourish. Similarly, the ritual of parents reading their kids to sleep, which always struck me as incredibly narcissistic on the part of the adults, is a memory apparently cherished by many. My own childhood story ritual was listening to a tape of The Snow Queen every night as I attempted to drift off. The sound of the queen flying up to the children’s attic window, tapping on the glass and keening their names in a ghostly voice is one of my most harrowing, vivid recollections. It was only fiction, but fictions provoke real reactions.

Later, I was given a wonderful hardback book of hundreds of stories, each exactly a page long. One was about a young woman with waist length blonde hair. She was so tired of being teased (or as we say these days, sexually harassed) about it that she tried to dye it black in the kitchen sink. It turned green and she was mocked even more badly when she went to school the next day. I never quite worked out the moral of the story. Either it was ‘just be yourself’ or ‘just be sexy’.

Readers have rituals: they read before bed or on a long afternoon, in the chair they always use, or on the commute to work. They do or don’t fold pages, break spines, underline things or read the last paragraph first. Writers also have rituals, some more OCD than others. I know some who kiss their copies of Pablo Neruda or George Eliot when beginning a new book, put a lucky charm on their desk or, getting to the trickier end of common behavioural disorders, make sure they’ve washed their hands three times before they touch the computer keys. Others go to their study with just the right cup of tea and just the right biscuit.

We are hoping that if we get the ritual right, it’ll repay us in words, in inspiration, in insight and good judgement. All of us are striving to write that one, perfect, satisfying thing. Every word has to count, every shift has to happen at the right moment. It goes deep yet seems light; it’s a structure of iron hung with silk. I once met a writer whose story had won a competition I co-judged. She hadn’t expected to win. ‘I just wrote it in a week,’ she said, exhilarated and disbelieving. I reeled back. It takes me months.

The story ritual is so powerful that we carry its psychological imprint with us for the rest of our lives, even to the point of naivety. We assume that our lives will have a coherent narrative balance, moral shape, emotional form. We go into our thirties and forties believing that things will always work out in the end, with a natural karmic equilibrium; that we will fall in love, perhaps even at first sight like so many fictional characters; that we deserve or are justified in pursuing adventure; that any event or act can be explained and therefore understood; that any pathology or feeling can somehow be decoded. We assume that this mysterious thing called karma will eventually repay the balance of evil and good. We believe that every story we live through must have an appropriate end, which we call ‘closure’, and that we can bring this about as though we are protagonists. It is from stories, nothing more, nothing less, that we believe that everything that has begun will be ended, and will end somehow fittingly. This does not happen often in reality, yet still we keep the faith.

I had to come to faith sooner or later. Underlying all world religions is an indissoluble trinity of faith, story and ritual. The great books of nearly all the world’s major religious belief systems are really just short story collections presented either as emblematic myths or as faithful accounts of true events. And all the rituals of the world’s religions are built on those stories, and everything we believe is built not on the evidence of our own eyes but on stories. Angels and other supernatural harbingers do not exist. The Garden of Eden did not exist. A man cannot walk on water. A god can’t have ten arms or four arms or a monkey’s head or an elephant’s head. The part-animal sentinels and judges of the Egyptian underworld do not exist. But it doesn’t matter. We read the stories, we heed them and we invest them with meaning, regardless of whether they are true or possible. We extrapolate their conclusions, build them into morals and use them to structure the laws, beliefs, values and customs of societies of billions of people. We use the stories to justify both our violence and our generosity, our exploitation and our humanity, our abusiveness and our self-sacrifice. We perform various rituals we invented, inspired by the stories, and have done so for thousands of years. That is the power of the story ritual: to underpin, explain and motivate human society for as long as we have existed.

Further reading:

  • All Bone and Muscle, an essay on the art and craft of short fiction which I wrote for the University of Chichester’s short story module. 
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India: is it safe? A question answered

January 31, 2014, 4:30 pm
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Calcutta, 2013. Image (c) Bidisha

I was born in Calcutta (now known as Kolkata) in India. I grew up there, went to university there, spent many charming evenings with friends there and worked there until I emigrated to the UK 40 years ago. Despite the dust and the chaos, being myself among people who are generally open, genuine, courteous and uncomplicated is something I long to go back to year after year.

Not long before I made my most recent trip back, two of my longstanding friends in England - both academics who, like me, have worked in the field of technology all their lives - were at my house having lunch. I was telling them about a previous trip and how impressed my daughter and I were by the progress the younger generation of Indian women have made. This was the same time that the news of the gang rape, torture and murder of a woman on a bus in Delhi was spreading worldwide. To this, one of my friends kept asking, "But is India safe?" I told her that for a long time Delhi had had a bad reputation for sexual violence, but those were isolated incidents, occurring late at night, in certain areas, committed by a certain type of people. Then I added, "Let's face it, sexual abuse of women happens everywhere in the world, doesn't it? And, in any case, Calcutta is much safer."

Having thought it over, I have a better answer to my friend's question.

Indian women have made enormous leaps. They are ambitious, proud, independent, uncaring of prejudicial criticisms and forward looking. They care less about what men think of their looks and behaviour and are more focussed on their own aspirations and achievements. This is true of women of all social and economic classes - within their own contexts.

In the past, educated and ambitious women went into careers such as teaching, academic research and medicine. They very rarely made the top ranks but, within a certain confinement, they earned respect and authority as long as they maintained the code of conduct expected of their gender and class. Poorer women worked all day, at home, in the fields and in rich peoples' houses to feed their children and do their best to give them a better life. Middle class men had always been ambitious and high achieving. They took jobs wherever they got the best opportunity, within India or abroad. Poorer men had little or no money but they were hard working, God fearing and simple minded. At the risk of sounding patronising, they were happy and busy trying to feed their families.

With India's economic progress, things have changed a great deal. Men are enjoying even more privilege and opportunities than before. Women are getting into careers monopolised by men in the past and they are progressing much further up their career ladders. Those people now have better spending power than non-resident Indians like me who, in the past, used to enjoy the privilege of spending foreign money in a land with a low cost of living. However, although there has been a significant trickledown effect towards the poorer classes, the difference between the rich and the poor is now enormous because of the phenomenal rise of the middle classes.

The daily papers in India are littered with reports of rapes and murders of women. We have all read about the Danish woman who has recently been gang raped in Delhi. As in every country in the world, sexual abuse and rape always existed but were not reported because of the stigma attached for the women survivors. Today, Indian women are ready to report such crimes. Most of those are committed by the lower economic and social classes. It goes without saying that middle class men commit sexual crimes also, but that happens in India the same way it does in every country in the world and the perpetrators get away with it the same way everywhere.

Having thought about the rise in sexual violence in India, I have come to the conclusion that this is one of the side effects of the country's growth in economic power and, more significantly, the progress women have made. Since everyone has more, people - both rich and poor - have become greedy. Men who have not made much progress but whose greed has increased with the increasing aspirations in the country have lost all sense of reality, fear, civility and self-respect. These are not starving or destitute people; they have access to TV and mobile phones, they walk around the shopping malls and can see how much they still cannot afford. They grow increasingly jealous and desperate, full of vengeance for those who are moving ahead and they want what is not theirs. They are angry with the women who they could command before and can't anymore and they want those women too. So they grab by force what they cannot get legitimately - they steal, rape and rob. The rape of foreigners is a bigger achievement: the more unavailable the target, the better the fulfilment.

The answer to my friend's question is No, India is not so safe anymore. Calcutta was once safer than Delhi but, since the rape case last year, there has been a rapid increase in rape in my home city too - almost like a war. It's the same old story: men using physical violence against women as a weapon to gain an upper hand.
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“Women have gone from being considered inferior to men and viewed as property, to being considered inferior and viewed as objects.” Persephone Speaks film-maker Ivana Ivkovic Kelley on justice for survivors of rape in war.

February 5, 2014, 6:30 am
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There are only four days left to support this project. Please get involved and be part of a worldwide movement for justice and against abuse.

A few months ago I covered the Kickstarter fundraising campaign for the documentary Persephone Speaks: The Forgotten Women of Bosnia, directed by filmmaker Ivana Ivkovic Kelley. Kelley and her team followed one woman, Bakira, through Bosnia to expose the systematic rape of countless thousands of women during the war and try to bring the men who authorised, organised and perpetrated these rapes to justice. A survivor of the mass rapes herself, Bakira has become a campaigner for other victims, despite receiving death threats and being subject to harassment and intimidation by those who wish to silence her and sabotage her work.

The first campaign for Persephone Speaks: The Forgotten Women of Bosnia was successful. Filming has been completed. Kelley has now launched a second campaign, to finish post production on the film, and there are only four days left to support this.




At the heart of Bakira’s work and Ivana Ivkovic Kelley’s film is a challenge to the international community to open its eyes, acknowledge and address the use of rape as a concerted strategy in war; the particular sickness, destructiveness and cruelty of rape as a type of violence; the support of rapists’ actions by a wider macho, misogynist rape culture which operates in all societies globally even in peacetime; the devastating years-long psychological, physical, cultural and social effects of rape on survivors; and the stigmatisation, punishing, abuse, denial and silencing of survivors, often by their own societies and even their own families.

As Kelley stated in the original fundraising campaign,
Females are nonstop targets during wartime, as demonstrated by the mass rapes implemented as a policy of genocide during the Bosnian war.  Because this atrocity is grossly ignored by the international community and international tribunals, this film revisits one survivor who continues to fight for justice on behalf of others all over the world.  ... The continued treatment of women around the world, especially during times of conflict, needs to be heard through as many channels as possible.  Unfortunately, war rape survivors are often seen as a problem, a by-product of war that needs to be swept under the rug.
However, the fight for justice is a hard won, waged by those who carry not just psychological and physical trauma but who have the least in terms of power, money, mobility and status. Both individually and at a mass scale, within families and within governments, within cultures and within whole societies, the trend is to punish victims and protect perpetrators, to silence victims and give perpetrators a platform, to abuse the abused and assist the abusers, to expose the victims and cover for perpetrators, to expose and question the behaviour and words of victims and condone and gloss those of the perpetrators. It is the victims who must do all the hard work, in addition to recovering personally, to gain justice – or even to be heard – while the perpetrators sit back, enjoying the victims’ torment and their own impunity. This is the case in all instances of male sexual violence, in wartime and peacetime alike.

The perpetrators and those who authorised them are fully entrenched in and enfranchised by established networks of patriarchal force. They are well-connected, well-resourced and mutually supportive. They are interested in power, not justice, and cannot be shamed morally because they are proud of what they did. If rapists did not love raping, they wouldn’t do it. If their apologists did not love rape, they would not assist and cover for rapists. Perpetrators and their apologists alike are enraged which victims of male violence speak up. However, despite their sadism and lack of shame – indeed, the shame and guilt which perpetrators should feel is transferred onto the victims – they can and must be brought publicly to justice through established international legal channels.

Persephone Speaks follows Bakira as she collects other survivors’ testimonies are seeks to have them heard in the courts in Sarajevo or the Hague. She also tracks down where some of the perpetrators live and presents this information to the courts. Commenting on the rewarding of perpetrators, Kelley wrote in the original fundraising campaign:
In many cases, the perpetrators are either awaiting trial or have been rewarded by the Serbian government for successfully running a "camp", often in the form of a promotion within the local police force.  We have witnessed incidents of this same "reward" behavior in similar conflicts around the world.  In situations such as these, many survivors have expressed anger, fear, and shock, especially when they see their attacker, years later, in high level positions or vacationing beside them on the Adriatic coast, which numerous victims have witnessed. 
The first campaign for Persephone Speaks:The Forgotten Women of Bosnia was successful. Filming has been completed. Ivana Kelly has now launched a second campaign, to finish post production on the film.

The context has obviously not changed. It beggars belief that the world community and people in general live not just in denial of this but are actively antagonistic and punitive towards survivors. One of many shocking moments during Kelley’s research has been the conversion of a rape camp into a luxury spa and hotel, whose manager dismisses survivors’ testimonies as “lies, lies, all lies.”

This is a film which must be completed and shown to the world. In the new campaign for post production funding, Kelley states,
We saw the same thing occur in Rwanda, the Congo, Liberia, Uganda, Bangladesh, Haiti, Cambodia, Cyprus, Darfur, and now in Syria... all in devastating numbers.  How survivors are treated post-conflict in one region of the world, regardless of whether it is in the heart of Europe, or the heart of Africa, and whether perpetrators continue to be brought to justice, has a huge  impact on how survivors will be treated going forward, regardless of geographical location.  The sexual violation of women erodes the fabric of a community in a way that few weapons can.  Rape's damage can be devastating because of the strong communal reaction to the violation and the pain stamped on entire families. 
The campaign for post-production seeks to raise $16,000, but ideally $22,000 and is partway there. Every time I and my colleagues cover the issue of rape in war the kickback is so interesting: in amongst the perpetrator excusal, hate mail (“You wouldn’t write about rape so much if it didn’t make your cunt tingle” is one choice line from the messages I receive) and victim-blaming there is a strong seam of positive passion and support, of other victims and survivors worldwide who are determined that this story be made loud instead of being silenced. Each film or article is a door opening onto millions of untold testimonies. Whenever I write about male violence against women and girls I uncover the immense trauma and pain of survivors, and their rage. These are a form of energy in themselves, which far outshout the bleating of apologists. We do not have the hatred, violating malice and anger of perpetrators and their friends but pain, determination, truthfulness and the desire for justice are far worthier substitutes.

To support this second and final phase of the Persephone Speaks: The Forgotten Women of Bosniacampaign, I contacted Ivana Ivkovic Kelley. She very kindly gave her time to answer my questions.

Why is it so important to make Persephone Speaks: The Forgotten Women of Bosnia?

I have been haunted by the reality women and girls seem to be increasingly facing during wartime. Women and girls have transitioned from being “the spoils” of war, to part of an operational military doctrine to ruin a community, a culture, a country: they have gone from being spoils to being used as actual weapons with which to conduct genocide in some cases. This is how we know we continue to live in an extremely unjust, unfair global society in which women have gone from being considered inferior to men and viewed as property, to being considered inferior and viewed as objects.

We really should not be measuring how much things have changed for women by the number of successful women that exist in our world today, but rather by how little has changed when there are parts of our world where it is legal to commit femicide if a woman simply looks at another man, rides a bicycle, leaves an abusive husband, gives birth to a girl child; or in wartime is used as the cheapest, most destructive weapon around. It is the most destructive because raping a woman or girl is not just an attempt to kill her spirit, it is the attempt to kill the spirit of her loved ones. In turn, multiplied, this has the ability to destroy entire communities at their core. The woman, after all, is the heart of a community.

What is your particular reason for wanting to make Persephone Speaks?

I have been haunted by the stories and testimonies I translated during the last years of the war in Bosnia. I was in college in the US at the time but  knew I had to be “in it” to help in some way, so I wrote my thesis on systematic rape used as a tool of genocide, that it was the first time in history that it’s been documented as part of a plan to wipe out a people. I travelled there while the war was still going on and connected with a group in Zagreb that was assisting the [mostly] Bosnian Muslim survivors of the rape camps, travelling to refugee camps often across enemy lines, providing them with food, clothes and medical aid as well collecting testimonies for eventual use in the Hague and local criminal courts. I knew that one day I would return to document where these women are now, and what has changed, both judicially and whether those who were vocal before have given up their fight for justice.

Has it been risky to make Persephone Speaks?

Yes. From the onset we have been receiving hateful, oftentimes degrading, comments on our Facebook page as well as individual emails through our project page on Kickstarter…sometimes an individual will send me a tweet saying they would like to interview me for a story they’re doing, only to end up shouting on the other end of the phone that I better watch myself because I don’t know what I’m talking about, that it was only Serbian women who were in the camps and that they were raped by Bosnian Muslim soldiers wearing Serb uniforms…or if I knew better, I’d keep my mouth shut or the same thing will happen to me.

It hasn’t happened as often as I would expect, but I feel that it’s pretty horrible for even one person to come forward and completely deny the reality of that war, the reality of photographs by such courageous photojournalists as Andree Kaiser and Ron Haviv, the reality of testimonies and the reality of what you feel when you look into a survivor’s eyes. There’s absolutely no denying the blanket atrocities that were done by a distinct, very clear perpetrator, especially when there is documentation and there are testimonies by individual perpetrators who have been brought to justice at the Hague that yes, this is what happened.

It is so important, I feel, for a particular government to confront its past, acknowledge and apologise to the victims, survivors, their families and communities, in order for healing to work. This is what human rights champions and survivors such as Bakira will publicly state when she holds forth, risking her life, in front of a memorial at a mass grave, as the local Serb officials in what is now an ethnically cleansed town attempt to erase the word “genocide” from said memorial.

This is a pretty big problem. As certain countries attempt to enter the EU, there needs to be outside pressure from Belgium to first recognise genocide happened and for the said government to formally acknowledge and apologise. Instead, those Serb politicians in the minority who have spoken out and have acknowledged genocide and mass rape are not only the least favourite but they are, oftentimes, placed on a death list. When we were shooting footage in the ethnically cleansed town of Visegrad (now part of Republika Srpska), we were met with our own share of passive hostility: asked to shut our camera off and leave the premises as soon as we entered the lobby of Vilina Vlas (a former rape camp now spa hotel); confronted on a tour bus led by a Serbian Orthodox priest denying the genocide; even in talking to local Serbs saying that they’ve always lived here and no, there was never any massacre of hundreds on the bridge and no, there was never any rape camp here. It all ended with me having my picture taken by a local Serbian man sitting on a bench with his friends, holding up his cell phone and menacingly telling me “now we have your picture too.”

Back in the States, I’ve received hate mail from Serbian Americans, some who are successful, running such things as a publishing company. I keep stressing that this film is about what happens to women throughout the world, during times of conflict, yet it is very hard to ignore the geopolitical reality of what happened in Bosnia. When discussing what happened to the women and girls there, there is simply no escaping the military doctrine put in place by one country to ethnically cleanse the other. There are risks that simply come with the territory and I'm certainly not the first documentary filmmaker to encounter it, nor will I be the last.

What exact work remains to be done on Persephone Speaks?


We completed production in October 2013 and are now in post-production. We are having the material transcribed, then any dialogue in Bosnian translated, then we get to the heavy duty editing. We have about 40-50 hours of footage from time spent in Bosnia in 2010 and 2011 and our first meeting with Bakira, to our time there this past summer and autumn.

We are in dire need of assistance to help us cover our costly post production costs. During the editing process, we will cover archived footage, music composition, sound and eventually the transition from a rough cut to a polished cut that we will be submitting to film festivals. Our hope is for this film to have its premiere at the Sarajevo International Film Festival this coming August, 2014, as we couldn't think of a more appropriate venue.

Is there anything like else like Persephone Speaks: Forgotten Women of Bosnia?

There are similar documentary films that have come out, such as Calling the Ghosts (1996) by Mandy Jacobson and Karmen Jelincic Ross and the brilliant documentary series Women, War & Peace (2013) produced by Abigail Disney. Part One of that, I Came To Testify, is about war rape in Bosnia.

What sets mine apart is seeing the day to day struggles that a survivor and activist encounters both on a professional and personal front. Showing a woman like Bakira not just fighting the good fight but reminding an audience that these are women who love to play with their grandchildren and find a meditative, healing solace getting their hands dirty in a garden. That regardless of ethnicity, culture, language, these women are our sisters, mothers, grandmothers, and friends. When an atrocity on such a grand scale happens to women anywhere in the world, we need to help spread their call for justice. Hopefully one day, women will not be viewed as property to be killed legally or sexually trafficked en masse, we won’t be viewed as weapons of war. Until that happens, in some ways, the work will never be done.

Contribute to the final campaign, to fund post-production on Persephone Speaks: Forgotten Women of Bosnia, here.


Further articles:

Disclosure: I was one of the many funders in the first campaign, donating $1000 to support it. Ivana Ivkovic Kelley is a stranger to me. She is not a friend of mine. I had never heard of her before I became aware of the campaign and I have never met or spoken with her, except to ask her via email for some comments for this feature. I have no role in the making of the film and am not invested in any way in its outcome, except as a human rights journalist who cares about the issues.
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Second chance to catch some Speed: a sharp new play about sex, sexuality, race, class and - scariest of all - contemporary dating

February 21, 2014, 5:59 am
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I first met Iman Qureshi when she compered a night of lesbian and gay literature at the Vauxhall Tavern, where I was speaking at a panel event, alongside Paul Burston, founder of the Polari Prize. Charismatic and witty, Iman not only talked on and talked off all the acts, she also wrote the evening up for Diva magazine (warning: contains an ancient, sunbleached image of me looking like an eight year old alien who was brought up by wolves in a forest). The previous day she'd been at Wormwood Scrubs prison, "talking to the offenders about being gay." As someone who does prison work let me just say: that's a tough gig.

Having worked around the media since moving to London after her postgrad a few years ago, Qureshi has now turned playwright. She premiered her first play, Speed, at the Tristan Bates Theatre in Covent Garden from 3rd - 7th December 2013. It had a sold out run and is now back on again for two weeks, from Tuesday 25th February until Saturday 8th March 2014.

A scene from Speed, the new play be Iman Qureshi

Produced by Kali Theatre, who develop thrilling new plays by women writers of a South Asian background - National Theatre, are you listening? Women's work is to be showcased, not aggressively ignored - Speed was originally part of the 2013 Talkback Festival,. No surprise to discover that Speed combines the topicality, wit and political freshness of its author. 

Another scene from Speed
As Iman Qureshi describes it herself, 
It's a bittersweet comedy set at a speed dating event, and deals with deeper issues of race, sexuality, class and gender. Speed was born of my experience of leaving the safe, artificial confines of university and moving out into the real world. Suddenly all the theories I read about – class privilege, male privilege, white privilege, heterosexual privilege – became actual, lived struggles.

My naive bubble of belief that women can do anything men can do, deflated with every cat call, every tired cliche about lifting the veil and every statistic and experience which indicated the existence of a glass ceiling. It slowly became quite apparent that who you knew meant everything. What you knew meant very little. My hope that racial equality had been achieved was promptly destroyed when it was once suggested that my name was too unusual to sign off with when sending out emails to strangers.

Speed is a play of people railing against the cages that society constructs for them. Whether it’s an intelligent woman exhausted by a world which reduces her to an object, or a person who rejects the gender role they are assigned at birth, or someone whose heritage leaves deep scars upon their sense of self worth, the characters in Speed are united by the common struggle of identity in a world which loves to box people in. 
Speed dating seemed to be the perfect mechanism to tell these stories. What is less reductive that five minutes to sell yourself to a prospective partner? Five minutes to decide whether to invest in the stranger sitting across from you when all you have is essentially a CV - age, job, hobbies, religion. Speed dating is also a microcosm of a world where love is just another commodity. Where finding a partner becomes yet another box to tick on our ‘To Do’ list of life. Where real human connections often lose out to the pursuit of contrived fairy tale endings.

I was also eager to give brown people the dignity of being represented without tired cliches or cultural stereotypes. Speed, I hope, is light years apart from narratives of extremism or arranged marriage. It is a play about Asians not thinking of themselves as Asian and of their place in modern Britain, but rather thinking of themselves as people.

Speed will be on at the Tristan Bates Theatre in Covent Garden from Tuesday 25th February until Saturday 8th March 2014 . Click here to book.




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On lies, liberation and Liberty

February 23, 2014, 4:30 pm
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Today, leading human rights group Liberty celebrates its 80th birthday. It has invited over a hundred Writers at Liberty to each contribute a piece of new writing reflecting on the aims, values and actions of the organisation. This was mine. Visit the Liberty80 site to learn more.

"Renaissance Florence was an excellent place for collecting documents. Mainly because they didn’t trust each other.”

I am writing this essay while watching a documentary on Machiavelli. A historian’s walking us through the Florentine state archives, showing the presenter a Medici’s Most Wanted persecution list and pointing out that the individuals on it need not have done anything in particular to have attracted suspicion. The presenter visits the police station where Machiavelli was tortured despite there being no evidence of him being involved in the conspiracy he was accused of.

How wonderful that five hundred years on we live in such different times. These days it would be unthinkable that suspicious and secretive governments might follow, seize and physically brutalise innocent civilians based on little more than mere suspicion. What a relief that we now enjoy enlightened and mutually trustful societies in which authorities have integrity; leaders are honest and accountable; judges provide justice with moral consistency and without cultural bias; the heads of the media, police, politics and big business are not all friends with each other; public bodies are representative of the populace they serve; institutions of power have been washed clean of vested interests; and, as humble but proud citizens, we can truly say that what we see is what we get. How comforting to know that the written and spoken word are enjoined in the furtherance of freedom, truth, justice and progressive harmony instead of being deployed in subterfuge, falsified to justify abuse, misappropriated to bend meaning, exaggerated to support a warlike and crusading atmosphere, worked up to derail arguments or simply logged and aggregated to create a secret archive that can be trawled for incriminating details and useful trivia at any time without our knowledge or consent.

Oh. Aha. I see. And I hear the distant, mocking laughter of Machiavelli as he swigs spectral wine and schmoozes his fellow deceased in the afterlife.

To be fair if not approving, the exercise of power and the methods of that exercise have been employed by those at all points on the political scale for centuries. The Vatican, the Elizabethan court, trafficking rings, the CIA, drugs cartels, the current US Senate, the ancient Roman senate, Interpol, Hollywoodstudios, the music industry and the mafia all behave in exactly the same way. Their actions are justified by research, which is gained by information-gathering, which includes surveillance, spycraft, infiltration, entrapment, the truth obtained by deceitful means. Those who have power, whether it is legitimate or not, elected or not, formal or not, have always justified their deceitfulness by pointing to the ends, the consequences. Look, they say, we have prevented attacks you never knew about; we have stopped individuals before they committed crimes; we can pre-empt the future because of what we know. They argue that when it comes to the subtlety of government, equivocal definitions of what is right or wrong break down. They argue that it is naïve to talk about what is good and what is bad, which are academic concepts that would disintegrate when the strong light of reality hits them.

They would laugh in my face if I tried to assert that certain actions are simply wrong. Perhaps I should couch the argument in language that wrongdoers would understand: some actions result in no tangible gain, no increase in meaningful intelligence, no advance in strategic position and no overall improvement to justify massive costs in terms of logistics, economics, international standing and public trust. Torture is wrong and does not yield reliable or useful information. Detention without justification, without giving detainees any reason, without charge, without trial, without legal representation, without set duration, is wrong and creates trauma, instability and resentment. Following someone and keeping a record of everything they do, say, write or read is wrong and creates paranoia, alienation and hatred of government.

It is not naive to fight for human rights and civil liberties, it is imperative. Otherwise the future will be one of absolute and mutual mistrust in all directions, between and amongst citizens, countries and world communities. It is obscene that anyone who is a grassroots  activist or a cultural advocate in defence of human rights should be monitored, as many of us are, as though we are perpetrators, abusers or lawbreakers. It is contemptible that petty laws should be invented in order to deter us, vilify us or criminalise us. When accused of flouting human rights, powerful organisations behave in a way that demonstrates that they do indeed routinely and systematically flout the human rights of others while aggressively defending their own interests. Having authority does not mean that you can do anything you want, then close ranks when caught.

The authorities will say that life’s complicated and that we should simply go about our daily business being watched and followed and not bother our little heads about it. If we haven’t done anything wrong, like Google something, go on holiday, go on a march or demonstration, speak at a panel event, sign a petition or have a chat with someone, we won’t have anything to worry about.

Everyone knows that governing is complex and involves subtle negotiation between multiple parties with widely differing views. But when it comes to the fundamentals, some principles are inviolable. I would even go one further and say that there is no difference between the rights and freedoms I expect personally and within personal relationships and those I expect politically and within a public, cultural, legal and social context. They are one and the same. Every human being has the right to live free of physical violation, mental torture, domination, abuse, stalking, surveillance and control. Every human being has the right to live free of fear, acting from their own will and physical and mental self-determination, not because they have been threatened, coerced or blackmailed. Every human being’s sense of dignity is intimately connected with their sense of privacy and their positive assumption of freedom of thought, freedom of movement, freedom of association and freedom of expression. These are not political values, subject to change according to who is in power. They are human values.

It is tempting to be blasé and say that the ruled have always been spied on by rulers, that it was ever thus and will always be thus. But it is not true that the present is exactly like the past only with different clothes, or that history is cyclical, or that you can’t stop Them and shouldn’t try to stand up to Them because They always get Their way in the end.

We have arrived at a unique time culturally and technologically. The authorities’ combination of deceit, control, watchfulness, duplicity and cruelty, masked with outward civility and outright lies, is now played out on a global scale, abetted by ever more efficient means of gathering, storing and sorting information. Many international governments’ covert political alliances and commercial deals for information sharing, the transportation and torture of suspected individuals, the sale of armaments, the levying of wars and exploitation of natural resources and emerging markets run counter to their publicly stated interests, values and allegiances.

This goes far beyond language, although I like a good political euphemism as much as anyone. Rendition means torture and extraordinary rendition means a lot of torture. Waterboarding – which sounds like a delightful low-impact sport that one might enjoy on Brighton’s seafront – is a euphemism for drowning someone. A resistance safe-zone is a rebel stronghold. A defence of privacy for privacy’s sake can be an admission of guilt inviting further investigation. The axis of evil is a mythical land where the USsacrificed soldiers for oil. Security means control. Arming in self defence is incitement to attack. A demonstration can be disorder, resistance can be rebellion, organising resistance means planning insurgency. Companies axing thousands of jobs say they are rationalising, harmonising or recalibrating. Swingeing cuts which put families below the poverty line are rebranded as thrifty, vintage-chic austerity measures. In the Big Society you do everything as before only for free and without state assistance. A ‘terrorist’ can be anything from a civil disrupter to a threat to national security and being accused of being one, even without a shred of proof, can justify any mistreatment whatsoever.

As the world becomes smaller, it is becoming more divided. Just when communication becomes more convenient, it is polluted by wariness and suspicion. Just when we have an opportunity to globalise in thought and intention as well as business, we take up a defensive stance and cling to divisive rhetoric, ignorant stereotypes and mistrustful attitudes.

What I seek is not just liberty but liberation.  Liberation from a mindset of mistrust and demonisation, the vilification of otherness and the paternalistic condoning of all surveillance, detention and physical abuse on the grounds of security. Liberation from the fear that someone is always following us or watching us. Liberation from our entrenchment in a cruel, self-justifying system of control which can be brought down on us at any moment, for any reason. And liberation from the aggressive, combative, violating machismo which argues disingenuously that violence is sometimes okay.

The only weapons ordinary citizens have against these trends are our actions and our words, although journalists are in a trickier position than ever. We are either violating the human rights of celebrities and relatives of murder victims or campaigning for truth and justice or accidentally leaving state secrets on the bus and being hauled up in front of political investigations committees or ethics boards or national security tribunals or international courts, depending on how our actions are interpreted and by whom. We are either peddling damaging lies or damaging truths. We are influential and dangerous, mistrusted because our behaviour is risky and independent. When we try to whistleblow we are accused of jeopardising structures that we could never possibly understand. When we try to investigate those structures and hit upon sensitive material we are scapegoated publicly as troublemakers.

Either way, the ferocity of the reaction to journalists’ endeavours indicates something about the impact of the word. UKand US governments are just as frightened of journalists as governments in Iran, Afghanistan, Russiaand Mexico are. They fear the word because it’s powerful. Indeed they use that wordpower themselves, negatively, to stir up tactically useful prejudices, plant slanderous lies, maintain myths which work in their favour and gloss their own violence. Those of us on the other side use our position to create space for a truth denied, a suffering voiced, a protest lodged, a testimony revealed, a campaign launched. This is why I am a part of Writers at Liberty.


NOTES:
  • Read more about the genesis of the project in this brief write-up in Five Dials magazine.
  • If you would like to join Liberty and speak up for civil liberties and in defence of human rights, click here now.
  • To find out more about the many events and initiatives surrounding Liberty's 80th anniversary, please click here.
  • Some of the other writers involved in Writers at Liberty include Naomi Alderman, Yasmin Alhibai-Brown, Tariq Ali, Anthony Anaxagorou, Hephzibah Anderson, Lisa Appighanesi, Chloe Aridjis, Tash Aw, Damian Barr, Alex Bellos, John Berger, Eleanor Birne, Terence Blacker, Malorie Blackman, Rosie Boycott, William Boyd, Margaret Busby, Antonia Byatt, Georgia Byng, Shami Chakrabarti, Tracy Chevalier, Ian Cobain, Edmund De Waal, Jenny Diski, Anne Donovan, Tishani Doshi, Stella Duffy, Ian Dunt, Joe Dunthorne, Geoff Dyer, Fernanda Eberstadt, Lauren Elkin, Bernadine Evaristo, Michel Faber, Jenni Fagan, William Fiennes, Judith Flanders, Ken Follett, Hadley Freeman, Patrick French, Esther Freud, Janice Galloway, Misha Glenny, Niven Govinden, Lavinia Greenlaw, Jay Griffiths, Niall Griffiths, Mark Haddon, Sarah Hall, Mohsin Hamid, Peter Hobbs, Tom Hodgkinson, Marina Hyde, M. J Hyland, Rhian Jones, Sadie Jones, Jackie Kay, Emily King, Nick Laird, Nikita Lalwani, Darian Leader, Ann Leslie, Kathy Lette, Deborah Levy, Richard Mabey, AlisonMacLeod, Sabrina Mahfouz, Hisham Matar, Lise Mayer, Sophie Mayer, Hollie McNish, Michael Morpurgo, Blake Morrison, Tiffany Murray, Daljit Nagra, Patrick Ness, Lawrence Norfolk, Rachel North, Richard Norton-Taylor, Maggie O’Farrell, Catherine O’Flynn, Ben Okri, Don Paterson, Shyama Perera, Adam Phillips, Hannah Pool, Philip Pullman, Ross Raisin, Alice Rawsthorn, Philip Ridley, James Robertson, Michael Rosen, Hannah Rothschild, Elif Şafak, Taiye Selasi, Kamila Shamsie, Jo Shapcott, Nikesh Shukla,  Ali Smith, Daniel Soar, Ahdaf Soueif, Craig Taylor, Barbara Taylor, Kate Tempest, Colin Thubron, Salley Vickers, Erica Wagner, Helen Walsh, Marina Warner and Sarah Waters.




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"This is an issue at every level of publishing." The S I Leeds Literary Prize tackles race, sex, diversity and literary fiction.

February 26, 2014, 4:30 pm
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Topnote: The S I Leeds Literary Prize is now accepting entries for 2014. Submissions are accepted online - click here - and will be accepted until the deadline of 31st March 2014.  

In April 2011 I was a panellist at a London Book Fair event on racial diversity in publishing, chaired by Shreela Ghosh, the former director of the Free Word Centre and current Director of Arts in South Asia for the British Council. The audience was very international, as befits a major publishing event (though not as major as Frankfurt in October), but 99% white. Still, by their presence in the large hall, they had shown their interest and concern about this issue. The panel was all non-white and made up of literary scouts, journalists, novelists, arts leaders, literary magazine editors and commentators. All of us described that moment when, feeling successful in our individual careers and thinking that things must be taking a turn for the better, we looked around a high profile event we were participating in and realised that we were the only non-white people in the room.

What emerged from the discussion was not a catalogue of outright racist incidents, insults or openly discriminatory and prejudicial events. It was more a question of types and stereotypes, of individual industry success stories like those of the major US publisher Sonny Mehta against a general backdrop of homogeneity in terms of race, class and educational background. At the same time, however, there has been a rise in acclaim for truly global authorial voices from Arundhati Roy to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Kerry Young to Chibundu Onuzo, Ruth Ozeki to Xialuo Guo, Nadifa Mohamed to Chika Unigwe, Yiyun Li to NoViolet Bulawayo. The 2013 Man Booker Prize shortlist was hailed for its diversity and variety and said to be the best in the prize’s history. From this year forward, the rules of this defining English-language prize have been widened in order to be as inclusive as possible. I am a trustee of the Booker Prize Foundation and have written in full support of this widening here.

Resistance against this inclusiveness and globalisation has come from some unexpected quarters, and has been amazingly transparent. I was shocked when, after the announcement of the 2013 Man Booker Prize shortlist and the new eligibility guidelines, Philip Hensher wrote a Guardian article isolating the three non-white women on the list, Jhumpa Lahiri, Ruth Ozeki and NoViolet Bulawayo, and systematically, casually and gratuitously trashed them. He later picked another non-white woman, Xialuo Guo, who commented at the Jaipur festival this year that the worshipping of the English language (and, specifically, American literature) should not dominate the world literary scene. Hensher wrote, personally, nastily and incorrectly, “by the conventional standards of the English-language novel, Xiaolu Guo's work in English is poor” and that “it would take some nerve... if she were implying that what is needed is an entire change of critical standards in order to recognise her own work as a masterpiece.” He added, creepily and threateningly, “I saw Guo in the green room, looking jolly pleased with herself.”

At the same time there is a much broader cultural trend happening not only across literature but also theatre, television and film, of non-white talent achieving a certain level of success before colliding with the racial bar, hitting the glass ceiling, sliding off it and leaving the UK to seek opportunities elsewhere, often in America. This has been most obviously apparent if we look at the careers of TV and film performers like Idris Elba, Archie Panjabi, Marianne Jean-Baptiste and Chiwetel Ejiofor.

Yet it’s also happening behind the scenes. The internationally acclaimed film-maker Pratibha Parmar, whose latest work, the documentary Alice Walker: Beauty in Truth, has been winning awards at film festivals all over the world, has also relocated to America, where her career has exploded. Several weeks ago the British playwright Kwame Kwei-Armah, now the artistic director of Baltimore’s Centre Stage theatre, gave an excellent interview in the Guardian, in which he spelled out the process of steady loss of faith and pointed out how much talent the UK had let go of because of it. I Tweeted him that day, “I too am contemplating leaving the UK permanently. #glassceiling.” I added, “This is not about failing but about flatlining, despite all one’s talent, shrewdness, strength and application.”

I stand by those words and by the article I wrote a few years ago about hitting the glass ceiling. I am excellent at my job. Either I am offered a regular post, with a title, with a role, in an institution, with a contract, with a salary, commensurate with my expertise and experience, within the next 18 months, or I am permanently leaving the UK to join any society that is looking forward and outwards, not inwards and backwards.

After 21 years of an enjoyable and diverse freelance career, many small opportunities, a lot of working for free and a lot of running around town being delighted and delightful, there comes a time when you have to sit down, do the maths and do some counting. Who is getting the big jobs, the permanent jobs, and what are they being paid? Am I running as hard as I can, just to stay in the same place? Why am I the only woman/non-white person/both on the panel? Why did Mumsnet ask me so warmly and kindly to join their bloggers network, then produce Blogfest events in 2012 and 2013, each of which featured more than 50 writers, journalists, presenters, commentators, critics, experts and bloggers, of both sexes, which were 100% white both years? Do they think non-white people can’t write, speak or think? Look at the recent lineup - it just beggars belief.

It is easy to enjoy your daily life so much, and be swayed by people being nice to your face, that you lose sight of the reality of who is being given the opportunities, respect, representation, remuneration, payment, platform and permanence, and who is used casually, tokenistically, without tenure, without assurances, paid a token amount, kept at the margins and strung along insincerely without gaining any traction. 

It bothered all of us on the publishing panel that the globalisation among creators and audiences, voices and debates, was not reflected within British publishing itself. We advocated the mainstreaming of real diversity within publishing as an industry, so that the future body of professionals from agents and editors to publishers and PRs would look a lot more varied than the large audience we saw before us and comprise individuals of promise and passion from all backgrounds, not just those who attended elite universities, had the family funds to sustain unpaid internships or the social connections to gain casual appointments to the industry.

When we returned to the question of authors and non-white authors’ narratives, a story emerged of fixed set-ups, stereotypes, expectations and assumptions. We all knew what the cliché narratives were: forbidden love among the lotus blossoms at monsoon time; how I became a terrorist; how I almost became a terrorist but not quite; my arranged marriage wasn’t all that bad; seduced and betrayed in a veil; I’m British and my parents don’t understand me; people of different classes fall in love; I was a geisha/concubine in the Forbidde City/floating world/jade palace and it wasn’t that bad at all; I was a geisha and it was very bad; I want to do this but my parents want me to do that; people of different religions fall in love; British multiculturalism is a tricky thing but still really interesting; look at all the different kinds of people you can get in London; I’m British and I don’t quite feel at home here, there or anywhere; I’m British and I’m really learning to appreciate my parents’ heritage; moving across hemispheres is hard and weird; non-white people take drugs too; brown cities are just as exciting as white cities; I was kidnapped as a child and forced to see a foreign city from the bottom up; foreign food is a metaphor for family, heritage, life, love and everything. 

The panel also discussed the issue of tokenism, of the maintenance of the appearance of diversity by having a stock amount of ‘international’ writers producing established and clichéd narratives for essentially bigoted and ignorant audiences who wanted their prejudices and stereotypes confirmed rather than destroyed. “I was working as a literary scout and I found an amazing novelist who happened to be from Antigua,” said one panellist. “I mentioned them to an editor at a publishing house, who said, ‘Oh, sorry, we already have one of those.” I remember having brunch with a highly impressive, vivacious, cool editor at a major publishing house. We were getting on like a house of fire and suddenly she burst out, “I love you! You tick so many boxes!”

In a must-read article about whether the Western publishing industry is institutionally racist, PP Wong, editor in chief of Banana Writers, describes a South Pacific Asian writer being rejected by a major publishing house despite impressing the editors there, because “the novel does not seem to fit into the genre of our current Asian authors”, as if race is a genre in itself and all writers of that race/genre must obey its racial/generic rules. The gaucheness and casual, unthinking racism of the editor’s comment makes me cringe. PP Wong adds in her report,
According to Creative Skillset ... just 4% of people in the publishing industry in England and Wales are Black/Asian/Minority/Ethnic.
Some commentators are also wary of the triumphalist celebration of British authorial diversity as being insincere, trend led and transient. The Guardian recently featured a nuanced essay by novelist Bernardine Evaristo, one of Britain’s finest and most distinctive voices, whose most recent novel Mr Loverman was one of the strongest publications of 2013. The title of the essay was Why Is It Still Rare To See A Black British Woman With Literary Influence?Evaristo pointed out that while a few years ago there was a strong move towards a celebration of politicised, race-aware work by Zadie Smith, Diane Evans, Andrea Levy, Monica Ali and others, this had now been replaced by “polite acceptance”, despite exceptional and successful women like children’s laureate Malorie Blackman, author of the stunning speculative series Noughts and Crosses. And – as an aside – while every other Young Adult literary hit from The Hunger Games to Twilight to I Am Number Four to The Dark is Rising to the Inkspell books to Beautiful Creatures to the Bone Season series has been put into development with major film studios, the completely mixed cast of Noughts and Crosses still awaits its screen life. Meanwhile, even a cursory look at the books pages of The Guardian, The Independent, The Telegraph, The Financial Times and the London Men’s Review of Men’s Books shows that despite one or two respectful mentions, the general demographic of representation is still extremely homogeneous. This is in addition to the extreme misogynistic discrimination perpetrated against women writers by the editors of major books pages, many of whom are themselves women.

I marvel at the countless insults which have been used over the years to justify the trashing, ignoring, undermining, exclusion and marginalisation of our work not only as authors in all genres, disciplines, styles and approaches but also as critics, reviewers and contributors. 

The insults used to justify cultural discrimination against us often contradict each other. We are slandered as shy, unambitious, narrow, nebulous, generic, unoriginal, too mainstream to be exciting or too niche to be broadly interesting. If we excel at romance, it is because we are daftly beggared by masochistic and unoriginal gender cliches. If we excel at history, it is because we are daftly sentimental. If we excel at science, it is only because we are exceptional, unlike the majority of women. If we excel at fiction, it is because fiction is easier to magic up at the kitchen table in our pretty little heads than the hard, confronting truths of non-fiction. If we sell a lot of copies it's because we flog undemanding trash to other women just as stupid as us. If we don't sell much it's because we don't have what it takes. If we excel at non-fiction it is because we lack the imagination, genius and creative spark necessary for fiction.

Obviously that's all bunk. Where women are undermined and excluded, misogyny and grovelling man-worshipping are the reasons. All the slanders thrown into women writers' faces are lies propelled by malice.  To ignore us is to ignore half the population: the half that sees beyond surface appearances, experiences the truth and dares to speak it. And it is women writers of colour who are able to cut through, describe and express the intricacies of the world we live in, because we exist at the intersection of the sexism and racism which have (in part) produced the power structures that dominate that world. We suffer it and are subject to it, even as we observe it. These things are the source both of our pain and our insight.

Despite flashpoints like the 2013 Man Booker shortlist and the trendiness of the multi-culti moment, overall trends still work against us: prospective works will be subject to narrow and stereotyped judgements; the people championing our work within the industry if it does get taken on will be operating in a virtually all-white environment; when it enters the market the Western cultural tendency will be to favour familiar Orientalist, exoticised, sexist narratives about suffering, oppression and dislocation; and as women (let alone women of colour) we have far less chance than male writers of receiving reviews, interviews, coverage or invitations to major book festivals to discuss our work. Although one book of ours might be published, the chance to create a career, build a lifelong body of work which is acknowledged, made part of the canon, taken seriously by the broader culture and incorporated into established literary history is far less than male and white peers.

It is for all these reasons that both Bernardine Evaristo and I, along with Bonnie Greer, Yasmin Alibhai-Brown and others patronise the S I Leeds Literary Prize for unpublished fiction by black and Asian women writers in the UK.

The S I Leeds Literary Prize is now accepting entries for 2014. Submissions are accepted online and will be accepted until the deadline of 31st March 2014.  

The prize is awarded every two years. The first award was made in October 2012 to Minoli Salgado for A Little Dust on the Eyes, and presented the Ilkley Literature Festival. Every year, three prize winners receive £2,000, £750 and £250 for 1st, 2nd and 3rd place, as well as support through Peepal Tree Press's Inscribe programme for writer development. The first prize entry receives serious consideration for publication by Peepal Tree Press.

I was lucky to be granted an exclusive interview by writer and arts project co-ordinator Irenosen Okojie, the S I Leeds Literary Prize advocate, who told me more.


What inspired the formation of the prize?

There’s a big disparity between what we see reflected on the shelves and the wonderful diverse voices that are out there. The prize aims to address that imbalance somewhat and to provide a platform for marginalized voices that are largely ignored. Walk into your local bookshop and it’s glaring. It’s as if female writers of colour are invisible bar a few exceptions. As for the amount of black and Asian male writers published these days, the situation is even more dire. This is an issue at every level in publishing. There are also very few black and Asian professionals working within the industry which has an impact in terms of who the gatekeepers are. Who gets to decide what voices should be heard and which stories are worth publishing? I know of only two black literary agents, Elise Dillsworth and Susan Yearwood and five independent publishers that publish inclusively; Peepal Tree Press, Valerie Brandes of Jacaranda Books, Bobby Nayyar (Equip and Limehouse), Rosemarie Hudson (HopeRoad Publishing) and Smash & Grab. If we have more diversity within the infrastructure, that might filter through to work that gets commissioned. A national prize like the SI Leeds Literary Prize is about celebrating the voices of black and Asian women.

 Do you feel the current publishing scene lags behind what is really happening in terms of what writers are doing?

Yes I do. Publishing is often slow to change. I remember when the digital explosion first happened. Publishers seemed sceptical at first but slowly came round, now you have a few of the bigger houses with digital imprints such as Bloomsbury’s global digital imprint Spark and Little Brown’s digital imprint Blackfriars. Also, self publishing no longer has the stigma it once did; many writers are finding ways to get their voices out there with several being picked up after finding self publishing success. There are more independent publishing houses cropping up, taking risks mainstream houses won’t and publishing daring, innovative writing like the brilliant And Other Stories and Galley Beggar Press. Many writers are taking ownership of their careers and not just leaving everything to the publishing houses. They’re on twitter, facebook, making book trailers and maximising digital opportunities. They’re connecting with other writers internationally and tapping into opportunities. Equally, publishers could create more accessible pathways for aspiring authors. The industry seems to mostly care about authors who are brands. They’re used to doing things in a traditional way. Nobody’s saying they should get rid of traditional methods entirely but why not explore other ways of sourcing new writing? Like partnering with any of the writing development agencies and running a programme or Editors getting out to literary nights such as the Brixton BookJam which does a great job showcasing a wealth of talent. Writers are getting out there; they’re at festivals, spoken word nights, setting up online hubs, finding creative ways of reaching audiences.

Why are prizes important? Aren’t there too many prizes?

Prizes are important because they profile books that may otherwise struggle to reach a bigger audience. For example, the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize highlights some of the brilliant translated works of fiction many book lovers may be unaware of, unless you’re somebody who actively seeks translated foreign works. There are several prizes but I don’t think there are too many and there certainly isn’t one like the SI Leeds Literary Prize. It’s uniquely positioned and the only one of it’s kind. I’m sure there’ll be some grumblings that it’s a prize which favours writers of colour. The reality is, it’s absolutely necessary. If publishing were a level playing field, there wouldn’t be a need for it. We’re thrilled to be able create opportunities for writers we engage with through the prize. It’s not just about giving cash awards but the developmental support they receive.  

What are the barriers to women of black and Asian origin in beginning and maintaining their writing careers?

It’s a complex issue on several levels. Some editors will say they don’t receive many submissions from black and Asian women which may or may not be true. From a writer’s perspective, not only is publishing very difficult to break into but throw in race and it feels like an even steeper climb. It doesn’t seem like the industry is very receptive bar some exceptions. Also, there is the risk factor. Certain editors may not necessarily think about commissioning diversely, they just commission writing to their taste. Others might do, but they limit the amount of black and Asian writers because they may see it as a risk. We’re all human beings and good stories transcend so I think there needs to be some myth busting done at both ends of the spectrum. There are editors who have commissioned black and Asian female writers in the past and now. The issue is that it doesn’t happen often enough and there are authors of colour whose books have sold very well. There’s also an element of things aligning at the right time; getting the right agent, the right editor and a publishing house invested in the career of the writer.

 How many years has the prize been going and who were the women winners?

It’s a biannual prize which has been running since 2012. The first winner was Minoli Salgado for her novel A Little Dust on the Eyes. It’s due out later this year so people should keep an eye out for it. The prize has stayed connected to previous short listed writers and is passionate about creating opportunities for them. We’re also open for submissions for this year’s prize so I’d really encourage people to submit!

 What does the prize aim to achieve for individual writers?

To build their confidence, to let them know there’s a space out there for their work, encourage them to keep working on their craft, to produce opportunities connecting them with audiences, to create pathways and support networks that take them through the tricky transitions of realising their publishing dream.

Finally, how would you like the prize to develop?

I’d like it to continue to grow in terms of profile and what it does for writers. Maybe have a short story prize as well and to keep forming strong, strategic partnerships with organizations and sponsors who are on the same page and keen to see more diversity in publishing.


The S I Leeds Literary Prize is now accepting entries for 2014. Submissions are accepted online and will be accepted until the deadline of 31st March 2014.  



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Inside: the power of books in prisons

March 24, 2014, 9:28 am
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This is in response to justice secretary Chris Grayling's ban on books and other items being sent to prisoners. This article has also been picked up, here, by the human rights and civil liberties organisation Liberty. For more details on Grayling's measures click here and also here and to sign a major petition protesting them please click here. 

I do outreach work in prisons and also in detention centres and I have seen first hand how powerful and important books are to prisoners. Book are vital, not only in providing enrichment for inmates but as a way of connecting with others to talk through, challenge, inspire and provoke debate in a rewarding and constructive way. In all the institutions I have visited, book groups, reading groups and writing groups exert a strong pull on prisoners, who show themselves again and again to be dedicated, committed, passionate and insightful in their work and in their dealings with me and with each other.

A literary culture creates the space for civilised, meaningful relating, for social development, for questioning and self-questioning, learning, self-improvement: all the things a truly constructive prison system should represent. I have seen virtually silent prisoners linger around the edges of a group and then, through a few comments and some close reading, gain confidence, develop their skills and showcase their talent. The books are not just a source of education but also of entertainment of the most enriching and deepening kind. They are, in fact, an essential tool in tackling the poor levels of literacy and the accompanying frustration, low self-expectation, daily obstacles, narrowed opportunities and the intractable economic and social deprivation and desperately limited horizons which contribute to an environment in which petty but repetitively (almost compulsively) committed crimes are almost an inevitability. I am not talking about 'being soft' on rapists, child abusers, batterers, thug murderers, predators and woman-killers but about lifting up and liberating that great miserable body of the prison population: neighbourhood burglars, car thieves, petty hustlers, smalltime crooks, scrappers and scufflers, drug pushers who are addicts, teenage or early twenties wannabe gangsters, holders or passers-off of stolen goods. For these types, prison can be an opportunity either to become grossly influenced by malign individuals even further down the road to moral and economic corruption - or to gain some skills, judgement, backbone (as opposed to bravado) and promise, which can be taken out into the world upon release. Reading skills can contribute to ensuring that, in time, released prisoners might build a stronger and better life for themselves than they had before their sentence, not because of an increase in something nebulous and romantic like dignity but because literacy skills are vital to worldly progress.

As with all teaching, through the collective experience of reading and talking about reading, the prisoners I have worked with have taught me much more than I could teach them or they could teach themselves without the structure and focus of a book to anchor them. Certainly, we all learned a thousand times more in a couple of hours spent together daily than we would have during whole afternoons spent on the landings [where the cells are] watching daytime TV.

Furthermore I have been told directly by women prisoners with initially low literacy skills how fundamental reading has been to them. One woman told me, "My mum didn't know how to read or write, I didn't know how to read or write, that was just the way it was. So I taught myself in prison."

There is a further point, and it is gendered. I am extremely alarmed by the cruelty and punitive malice of Grayling's proposals for women prisoners with children and the suggestion that children cannot send their mothers parcels.

The overwhelming majority of women prisoners are 'inside' for non-violent crimes. The process of incarceration is mentally traumatising in itself and additionally has grave real-world consequences. In virtually all the cases that I have seen, women prisoners had been their children's primary carers and guardians, with secondary care provided by grandmothers and other female relatives. With the central source of stability and care removed and in many cases moved far from families' home towns, if female relatives cannot take on the childcare responsibilities then families are broken up, young children are put in care and a new cycle of deprivation, vulnerability, exploitation, damaging instability, lack of opportunity and circumstantial predisposition to offending begins.

We can see from all this that it is often the supposed cure, not the crime, which creates deep and long term trauma and is a key factor in the pressing issue of women prisoners' mental health and self harm. Incarceration for crimes which are more often than not the result of economic deprivation, abuse, inequality and lack of support inflicts mental wounds, drags an entire family even further down socially and creates the ground for yet more crimes to be committed - out of survival, out of necessity and out of pain.

The sense of isolation in a prison is extreme and is made perversely worse by the sheer numbers of other prisoners, guards and civilian staff. The entire non-prison world is referred to by prisoners as Outside, and the prison described numbly as Inside. Incarcerating people in a way that is mentally violent as a means of punishing non-violent crimes does not work and destroys everything, inside and out, mental and physical. There is little stimulation in a prison except for basic skills learning, a few hours of classes per day, helping out as an orderly, working in various prison areas such as the 'servery' [kitchen and canteen] or packing boxes of goods to go between prisons, sitting in front of daytime TV, idle chat and destructive scheming which is usually the result of boredom and depression. In such a context books are a humane necessity, vital for the intellect, for processing and sublimating the emotions, for socialisation, for education and for development - not a form of empty entertainment to be handed out like sweets to those who behave well. It is a fallacy that prison life is cushy, although the routine and the utter predictability and slow demarcation and regimentation of time may be comforting for those whose outside lives feel insecure, emotionally raw or unsafe. Treats, in the form of everything from letters to books to clothes and sachets of perfume or a nice top, are rare and treasured.

Receiving gifts and messages from their children and having something to talk to them about on visits - something like a story from a book - is many women prisoners' lifeline, their only source of sustained warmth and hope from the outside world. A chat about a book, gifted to a prisoner by her child, may be the only thing which makes a prison visit less frightening for that child. The prisoners pay this token of love and kindness back at Christmas time when they record stories on CDs for their children to listen to.

I will end with that fragile image of reciprocated love, communication and storytelling. I hope that Grayling changes his mind and seeks more effective, more humane, less petty and less malicious ways of reforming the prison system.


For more on my prison work see this report by the Prisoners' Education Trust, this from English PEN, this also from English PEN and Rape, Refusal, Destitution, Denial on my outreach work with asylum seekers and refugees, many of whom had experienced detention and imprisonment.
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Leah Thorn, the poet and activist facing and transforming the lives of women in prison

April 4, 2014, 12:24 pm
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Further reading: Inside: the power of books in prison, written by me for human rights organisation Liberty and based on my own prison work.

I wanted to highlight the work of a heroine of mine, the poet, activist, performer and prison worker Leah Thorn, who has granted me an exclusive and in-depth interview, below. Given the UK government's latest measures to restrict parcels, including those containing books, going into prisons, we desperately need the action and advocacy of individuals like her to convey and address the reality of life in prison, especially for women. Some of her work with women in prison has been captured by the film-maker Suzanne Cohen in the highly acclaimed documentary Beautiful Sentences, which can be viewed here:



Leah also gave a TEDxWomen talk on incarcerated women and the transformational power of poetry, which can be viewed here:



She is currently making a film of her poem Shhh! which, she tells me, "is about sexism and the continued need for a feminist revolution" and will be submitted to poetry and film festivals upon completion. The film is being made by Second Shot, a production company at the men's prison HMP Doncaster, where Leah spent time filming and talking with the men about issues the poem raises. As I write this, on 4th April 2014, Leah is giving a performance and talk about women in prison and the power of poetry as part of the Wise Words Festival in Canterbury. Later in the year she will be teaching a six week summer course at Canterbury Christchurch University, entitled What Does The F-Word Mean To You?

Leah Thorn photographed by Suzanne Cohen
Image taken from Leah Thorn's site

Following the government's extremely unpopular new measures regarding the prison system - please click here to read the official response to protests against these measures - I asked Leah more about her experience of working in prisons:

How long have you been working with women in prison and how did you get into it?

I've been working in prisons with the Anne Frank Trust for about eight years. My commitment to women’s liberation means I focus a lot, but not exclusively, on the incarceration of women

Do you see the issue of women in prisons as a feminist one?

Completely. Women make up a small, and consequently ignored, minority of the overall prison population: 4.8% in England and Wales. The starkness of women’s imprisonment keeps me rooted and alive to the rawness of sexism, male domination and misogyny and more aware of the lived experiences of working-class Black and white women.

I am uneasy about quoting statistics that are freely used to designate incarcerated women as 'the most damaged women in society'. Diminishing a woman to a number denies her resilience and ability to survive and serves to distance her from women outside of the Criminal Justice System. However, the figures clearly show how incarcerated women have been targeted and controlled:
  • 53% of incarcerated women have reported emotional, physical or sexual abuse as a child, with a similar proportion of women having been victims of domestic violence
  • 31% of women prisoners have spent time in care as children
  • 40% of women in prison left school before they were 16
  • 46% say they have attempted suicide at some time in their life
  • 30% of women entering prison require drug detoxification.

Certain populations of women are more vulnerable than others to being criminalised. For example, Black women are four times more likely than white women to be incarcerated and frequently receive longer sentences for similar crimes.

One in five women in prison in England and Wales are Foreign Nationals, technically those who do not have a UK passport. A significant number have been coerced or trafficked into offending. I have worked with women whose only experience of England has been a Customs hall in an airport, a court and a prison. I have witnessed the bewilderment, loneliness and fear of women unable to speak a word of English, who have no-one on their prison wing who can speak their mother tongue. It can take days to find another woman who can interpret and explain what is happening.

Two thirds of women in prison are mothers of young children and many of the women I work with spend their sentence desperately concerned about their children's care and whether they will lose parental rights. In any one year in England and Wales, 17,000 children are separated from their mothers by incarceration. Only 5% will stay in their own home. The others will be cared for by family members or put into foster care.

Despite public outcry, pregnant women are still put into prison and four babies a week are born to women in prison. It is hard to see a woman locked in her cell hours from giving birth, alone and exhausted. Sometimes a prison officer is designated as a woman's birth partner but it often happens that the woman gives birth when that officer is not on shift. Women do not give birth inside jail except in medical emergencies and women are no longer restrained with handcuffs when giving birth, although some women still fear this. However, the women is usually on an open maternity ward with constant bed watch, which means having two officers either side of them for their whole stay. At present there are seven specialised mother and baby units  in England - there may well be fewer by end of the year - and newborn babies can stay with their mothers for between 9 and 18 months.

Older women are the fastest growing age group to be imprisoned. Last year in England and Wales, 368 women aged 50 or over (including 55 pensioners) were jailed, an increase of 139% in that age group. Many are primary carers for disabled or elderly dependants.

Dishonesty is the biggest reason for women's incarceration. More than two thirds serve time for non-violent offences such as shoplifting, welfare benefit fraud, employer fraud and receiving stolen goods. Research on mothers in custody found that over a third said they offended because of ‘a need to support their children’, with single mothers being more likely to identify a lack of money than those who were married.

There is also a strong likelihood that women’s offending is prompted by their relationships with men. Coercion by men can form a route into criminal activity for many women.

Women entering prison are likely to be serving short sentences. In 2012, more than 4,500 women entered prison to serve sentences of 6 months or less. More than half were given sentences of 3 months or less, whilst more than 1 in 10 were sentenced to 4 weeks or less.

Of course there are some women in prison who have committed violent crimes against adults and children and I never dismiss what their early experiences and resultant undealt-with distress have led them to do. Many have committed violence under the influence of drugs and/or alcohol and many perceive their offence as retaliation on a society that has not protected or valued them. However, their treatment in the Criminal Justice System is unlikely to help them face what they have done and move on.

What kind of work do you do with women in prisons?

I am a white older woman, who goes into women's prisons as a spoken-word poet and as a women's liberation activist. For two years I was writer-in-residence in a women's prison and I now run poetry-for-empowerment projects across the prison estate, most recently with women who self-harm and with older women. I also speak out as a poet/performer on issues of women's liberation and incarceration.

In my workshops I support women to express their thoughts and experiences through discussion, individual and group writing activities and listening and performance exercises. I encourage the women to share their writing, not for literary critique but for the sense of connection they get from the recognition and appreciation of others.

During my prison residency, we devised poetry performances to mark events such as International Women's Day, Black History Month and Holocaust Memorial Day. Poetry performances were also taken into workplaces like The Cleaning Academy or the crafts workshop or to the Education Department. It was inspiring to see women flourish into powerful performers, whilst their audiences changed from being reluctant and suspicious to being engaged and moved. It was affirming for the poets to experience their work being so well-received and applauded.

Poetry anthologies were compiled and edited to validate the women's creativity and thinking, including the book 'release' which was written by, and for, women in prison who self harm. 'release' contains poetry, women's stories and a feminist exploration of self harm and the book has been circulated by the Ministry of Justice to all women's prisons. One prison returned the books saying they did not have a problem with self-harm and several prisons expressed the view that the women's stories were 'too graphic and potentially upsetting'. This is ironic, given how graphic and upsetting self-harm is for the women who do harm themselves, as well as for the women around them and for the staff who have to deal with the consequences.

Do you feel that this work is effective and why?

The workshop space provides one of the very few safe places in the prison for women to express themselves truthfully and with emotion. The nature of creativity enables women to remember who they are as individuals, not as 'offenders'. And, unsurprisingly, having warm human connection helps raise self-esteem and self-confidence and build trust and openness between the women.

What are some of the personal stories of women you've encountered that stay with you and provide either hope & inspiration or a cautionary tale?

Here are a few things that are firmly in my memory:

A few women who have committed violent crimes will be held in isolation, locked up for 23 hours a day, with the remaining hour spent alone in a high walled courtyard. The isolation can obviously exacerbate feelings, and acts, of rage. So one woman I worked with had been in these conditions for six years, because the prison (with the best will in the world) could find no alternatives. She could only be unlocked if six officers were present and this treatment increased her rage, which in turn 'necessitated' further restrictions of freedom. It was clearly a self-perpetuating cycle. I am not saying that poetry was the answer, but I do know that for the two years we worked together, her levels of self-harm reduced. And as she began to open up about her childhood and teenage years, she began think afresh about herself.

I spent quite a lot of time on Healthcare, connecting with women through locked doors and that is a very strong memory for me. I witnessed a woman being put onto the Healthcare Wing, as she was shaking and crying hard and it was deemed that her mental health was ‘deteriorating’. Here was a woman who was responding in a rational way to incarceration. Yet instead of being offered more human connection, she was restrained and forcibly taken by officers to a bare cell and locked in by herself for 23 hours a day. She could be heard throughout the prison screaming ‘Is there anybody there?’ and ‘Can you help me?’. This of course brought up painful feelings for other women and for staff, as well as being devastating for the woman herself. I do not know how I would cope were that to happen to me.

As a safeguard against accusations of sexual abuse, I was taught in training never to get physically close to a woman and never to touch her. There are times, though, when I decide to put my hand on an arm or even hold a woman and because the outcomes have been positive, [ie she has not harmed herself or she has not need heavy medication], I have never been stopped by officers. In fact, there are some officers who will give physical comfort when it is clearly needed.

Lastly, in order to have access to all areas of the prison without an escort, I carried keys as a writer-in-residence. This meant wearing a heavy black belt at all times, with a pouch attached that contained the keys on a thick metal chain. I was worried initially about the difference this would make to the relationships I could make with the women. I did not want to be identified with the authoritarian aspects of the prison and locking up and unlocking women from their cells or Wings was a hard experience for me, especially when they thanked me for locking them up. However, I soon realised that listening and encouraging and respecting them overruled the strangeness of one of us having the power to incarcerate the other. The women were so ready, and eager, to give and receive warmth.

Why did you choose this issue on which to base your TED talk?

I chose to focus my talk on incarcerated women, feminism and the transformational power of poetry, mostly because issues of sexism and male domination are so starkly apparent within the setting of women's prisons. And also because TED talks can advocate individualistic solutions, rather than putting forward a wider political perspective on issues. I wanted to make sure there was some good old Second Wave non-liberal analysis on the day!

I explained how the Criminal Justice System plays a key role in framing and sustaining the oppression of women. It is important to acknowledge this form of social control and view it as an issue for women's liberation for several reasons:
  • The Criminal Justice System provides a lens through which to view the many ways women are punished for the impact on them of sexism. Working class women, and particularly Black working class women, are disproportionately represented in the system. The Criminal Justice System is wider than imprisonment, but I focus particularly on the incarceration of women as issues of sexism, male domination, racism and classism are so starkly apparent within the setting of women's prisons.
  • The social conditions that fuel women's routes into prison, such as poverty, isolation, harassment, substance dependency and abuse (along with the emotions and mental health challenges that arise from these conditions) are often intensified by the experience of incarceration. On leaving prison, most women go back to the same conditions as when they entered but with the additional distress of their experience of imprisonment.
  • Ultimately, the threat of containment and restraint gives ALL women the message 'This is what happens to you if you speak out or act out'.
  • Community solutions are more effective than incarceration in helping women turn their lives around and in diverting women, and particularly young women, away from criminal activity before they start offending.

You have now worked in the US and the UK women's prison systems. What are the main differences between them?

I write from the perspective of living in England, the 'lock up capital' of Europe, where 45 out of every 100,000 people are in prison. Thanks to a Winston Churchill Travel Fellowship, I have had the opportunity to see first-hand the female System of Corrections in the United States, the carceral nation of the world with 724 per 100,000 of the general population imprisoned, although these statistics may need revising later in 2014.

Sexism is sexism and there is a universality to women's narratives. Once a safe creative space is made, women tell hard stories, eager to share with each other, often for the first time. The stories and poems I heard from incarcerated women in the States were interchangeable in the similarity of their detail and emotion with those of women in England. In both countries I have listened to poignant poems and monologues on themes of domestic violence, sexual abuse, drug and alcohol addiction and involvement in prostitution.

However, there are differences between the US and the UK in the treatment of incarcerated women. In the UK, there is a groundswell of alliances to end the incarceration of women. One example is the Corston Report (PDF), commissioned by the then Labour government in the wake of a series of deaths of women in custody in Styal Prison. The remit of Baroness Corston's investigation was to address the need for 'a distinct, radically different, strategic, proportionate, holistic, woman-centred, integrated approach'.

The report makes a powerful case for diverting women before they get into prison and providing them with support and resources to help them deal with the results of sexism, poverty and racism. It costs £38,000 a year to keep a person in prison in England & Wales. When women are imprisoned, there are the additional costs of ensuring their children’s well being and maintaining family life. For a woman to attend a women’s community centre for one year costs £1,900 a year per woman. These projects will support her to look at her ‘offending behaviour’ in the light of the hurts she has experienced as a woman and give her practical support to deal with financial, legal, relationship, addiction and emotional challenges.

One of the first successes of the Corston Report was to stop the regular strip searching of women - 'Regular repetitive unnecessary overuse of strip searching in women’s prisons is humiliating, degrading, undignified and a dreadful invasion of privacy. For women who have suffered past abuse, particularly sexual abuse, it is an appalling introduction to prison life and an unwelcome reminder of previous victimisation.' However, strip searching of women prisoners is still common practice in most North American states.

Unlike the United States, there is no regular shackling of women in the UK, nor blanket use of uniform. There are also routine schemes in UK prisons that, although very limited, do go some way to supporting women - eg Storybook Mums, where women write, illustrate and record stories for their children; Toe By Toe, a peer literacy scheme; Listeners, offering emotional peer support; and programmes to support women who have experienced domestic violence or prostitution.

Of course this exploration of issues needs to expand to include experiences in countries other than the UK and the US, including those that have a different perspective on incarceration. For example, Scandinavian countries and some indigenous communities in New Zealand and Australia focus increasingly on the social and economic causes of offending rather than on the punishment of the individual. Prisons are being closed and support provided in the community.

Within prisons there is a real need for gender-appropriate training for staff with a particular emphasis on respecting women, understanding abuse and developing awareness of responses to trauma. Well-supported accommodation is needed on release, to break the cycle of repeat offending and custody and through-the-gate services are key. Women may leave the prison clean of drugs after detoxing inside but they come out onto the streets often unmet by anybody, with £40 that the government gives them and a see-through sack with all the possessions that they brought into the prison. Many will have lost their accommodation and many of them will be over 50 miles away from family and friends. They come out and either want to take drugs immediately or despite their best wishes they go back to their previous ‘haunts’ and acquaintances. Many are very vulnerable to men's distress. It was not unusual to say goodbye to a women and hear her say 'This is the last time I’m coming to prison'. Within a month, she would be back in my poetry group, feeling like a failure.

I have read and witnessed you speaking very passionately and knowledgeably about this issue. How did you professional history lead you to this point?

I came to Women’s Liberation through my job in anti-sexist youth work in the early ‘70s. Feminism informs the way I see the world, the way I live, but if I’m honest I did become discouraged seeing the gains of the Second Wave dismantled and appropriated. Working in women’s prisons has completely brought me back to myself, re-fuelled my passion for a feminist revolution.

And of course there is always a personal story behind the action. Everywhere I go, I go with an awareness of being a Jewish woman and with the strengths (and challenges) that arise from my identity as the daughter of a Holocaust survivor. In my early twenties, I began to understand the role of by-standing in the death of my German grandparents and I decided I would never willingly be a bystander. My prison work is part of that commitment. In prison, I employ useful skills I learned from being my mother's daughter - like, how to stay calm (or appear calm) in the midst of chaos and panic or how to use humour to lighten potentially dangerous situations. Working in prison means coming face to face with all that is wrong in the world and I want to ‘fix things’, [tikkun olam], with all that is rational about that, as well as all that comes from the urgency and unbearable-ness of seeing suffering up close, stark, stripped bare.


Leah Thorn can be contacted by emailing leah@leahthorn.com







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“Never forgive. Never forget. Take out a contract on their life.” 80+ homespun mottos for a happy existence.

April 9, 2014, 4:30 am
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Sun Tzu meets Mother Teresa? Ghandhi meets Machiavelli? A Chinese restaurant fortune cookie automated fortune printing machine meets the Ten Commandments? Here are my guides to life, inspired by Regina Brett and Harper’s Bazaar magazine’s great Words of Wisdom page.

  1. Listen to what your body’s telling you. It’ll save your life. 
  2. Judge people by what they do, not what they say. 
  3. Natural justice always prevails in the end. It takes a long time but it’s evisceratingly, disembowellingly thorough. Don’t bother with revenge if anyone’s deliberately hurt you. Never forgive. Never forget. Mentally, take out a contract on their life. Then forget about it. Concentrate on healing and being happy. When the karma happens, you’ll know. It will be permanent. It will be annihilating. And yea verily, you will be satisfied. 
  4. Never judge by appearances. You can’t tell a single thing about a person’s character, background, mood, values, opinions or history from their appearance. Not a thing. 
  5. If it feels good, in a calm and happy and at-peace way, it is good. 
  6. If it feels bad, or intense, or charged, or extreme, or agonising, or ambiguous, or so exhilarating that you’re on the brink of total insanity, that’s because it’s wrong. 
  7. Be friendly to everyone once. How they react after that will give you the measure of them. 
  8. Do what you love. You don’t have to turn it into your main career, but keep it in your life whatever else happens. Try to get a career which is roughly in the same area as what you love: either a different job in the same industry, or a different industry but using the same skills, or a different role with the same outlook, or something totally contrasting but attracting the same general type of person. Then, one side of your life with stimulate and inspire the other. 
  9. Never lie, never play games, never pretend, never deceive. Deception tears something fundamental in the fabric of the universe. 
  10. Being picky about food as a grown-up is a sign of ego, not healthiness. 
  11. Never knock the pleasures of a regular pay cheque. 
  12. If your life’s reached an impasse, learn something new and substantial. I mean like mastering a new language or getting a motorcycle licence. Not learning fantasy 1950s housewife cupcake crafting skills. 
  13. You will never regret doing a job that makes things better for people in general rather than making money for your bosses. 
  14. Don’t be a martyr. Remember that 90% of all charity volunteers are women of all colours and backgrounds working themselves to the bone for free and 90% of all charity bosses are white men paying themselves a businessman’s salary. Labour should be paid. Don’t act like some drivelling female masochist and say it’s fine. There’s doing good, then there’s good old fashioned sexist labour exploitation. 
  15. If you can, save half of everything you earn. Divide these savings into three. One third is for long term life savings. One third is for paying tax if you’re self-employed. The other third is a travel treat fund for you to see the world in style and comfort. 
  16. Everything in life is dominated by vested interests so maintain a healthy scepticism about your bosses, authorities, heads, management and other ruler types. Be polite whenever they address you, but don’t believe anything they say. 
  17. The corporation’s always bigger than the individual. If you try to take on a corporation by yourself, it’ll crush you. Even if you win a moral victory at a tribunal stage, you will lose your career. Line up a Plan B that doesn’t feel like a consolation prize, then try to change the system to make things better for everyone else. 
  18. Exercise a little bit every day, doing something you enjoy. It feels great and you’ll sleep really well. 
  19. Support groups are very nice but directly exposing, fighting and challenging inequality are fantastic. 
  20. Your pet cat is nowhere near as interesting as you think. I don’t care what it did/ate/caught/sicked up today. The shifty way it slinks about makes my skin crawl. 
  21. Don’t surf the Net, it’ll dissolve your brain. Log on twice a day, at noon and four, for half an hour each time, to check your emails, look up specific things and go over the headlines of whatever newspaper you prefer to read. If you need to be email-responsive for work, set up your iPad or iPhone in a far corner of your study or your desk and glance at it once an hour. 
  22. Graphic novels are not the Messiah. 
  23. If there’s a story you’re burning to write or any other creative project you’re desperate to pursue, do it. In the evenings. Don’t give up your day job to do it. 
  24. Don’t self-publish your junk or put your crap iPhone film on the free Net for everyone (ie. no-one) to see. That’s for losers, freaks and desperados and the people who’ve made it that way are a tiny proportion of all the ones that tried. If you want to be a book writer with a longstanding career you need a proper agent, a proper publisher/crew/distributor, proper deals and proper marketing. 
  25. You can use Amazon. You can complain about Amazon. But you can’t do both. 
  26. Just surviving long term in the arts, culture or media is an achievement in itself. 
  27. It’s great to be freelance but it’s also good to be in part-time regular professional alliance with major institutions whether they be companies, universities or the BBC. So if you can get yourself a regular gig, do so. 
  28. In work and life and love and creativity, don’t be influenced by passing trends or swayed by what other people are doing. By the time you’ve worked up a passable imitation the moment will have passed. 
  29. Don’t talk about yourself all the time. It’s not interesting. Ask other people about themselves. 
  30. Trust the universe generally. But more specifically, especially if you work in my field: don’t trust anyone. 
  31. It’s not gossip. It’s passing on important news. 
  32. It’s hard to be instinctive or predictive about situations, but trust your instincts about people you're dealing with in the medium term. If something strikes you as odd, it’s because it is. Listen to alarm bells and heed your red flags. 
  33. Don’t give attitude to B because you’re upset about A. If you’re upset about A, do what any decent normal person does and cry in the toilet. You’ll feel better. 
  34. Don’t flirtybanter with people whose job is to serve you in shops, restaurants or bars. At best it’s tacky, objectifying, patronising, arrogant and exploitative. At worst it’s sexual harassment. And it’s something they have to put up with all day, every day, in addition to their work duties. 
  35. Don’t sext or go back and forth on the text with people you’re ‘dating.’ It’s not sexy. It’s cheap, it’s tacky and if they’re doing it with you they’re doing it with a dozen others. Show a little bit of class and self-respect if you can. 
  36. Bullies aren’t cowards, they’re compulsive serial abusers who are brave, confident, entitled, experienced and have massive egos. Don’t turn yourself inside out trying to explain away or come to terms with the actions of bad people you’ve encountered. They’re just arseholes. 
  37. Accept that in every year you’ll waste £1,000 on something or other, usually a non-refundable booking, a lost deposit or a big-ticket item you’re not allowed to return. I call it my Annual Idiot Tax. 
  38. If you think you’re being paid less than your peers, ask them straight-up what they earn. It’s very hard to not answer a direct question. Even if they don’t really want to tell you, they will. You’ll lose friends but you’ll gain the bitter knowledge that you’re being paid less than everyone else because you have a filthy taint in your pants. Call it the Woman Tax. 
  39. Never argue back and forth with chippy strangers on the street, in shops, in queues or in businesses. It’s a waste of time. Take the high and humorous road instead, it’s a truly snooty mindgame that’ll leave you feeling fantastic. 
  40. When sexually harassed, always look delighted, immediately go right up close to the perpetrator, invade their personal space, put your arm around them, stroke their face and engage them in bright and intimate conversation at the very top of your voice, asking them if they want to be your friend, where do they live, what’s their name, where they work, how old they are and any question you can think of. Draw in anyone else who may be nearby. Then tell them all about yourself, your hobbies and your family. Invite yourself to Sunday lunch at theirs, perhaps. It’s always hilarious when you finally break it to them: “You know why I’m talking to you so much? It’s so that when I call the police I can give them a really, really good description of you. And I now have your DNA on me, from where I patted you on the head, so I can give them that too, and they can keep it on record. Although I have to say, you see up there? You’ve been standing in front of a CCTV camera all this time and I’m sure it’s got a lock on you by now. And now if it’s all right I’m going to take a photograph of you because you’re so lovely and friendly and I’m going to remember you for a long time and show it to the police and put it up on the Internet.” Turns out they never wanted to be friends in the first place, at all! 
  41. When I gave up make-up and alcohol I suddenly noticeably had a load more money in my wallet to be spent on food and travel and fashion magazine subscriptions. Just saying. 
  42. Skincare products give you acne. Acne treatments give you acne. Face flannels and exfoliating brushes give you acne. I had total red onion, chilli beef and pepperoni pizza sore purple acne all over my face and got rid of it by splashing it twice a day with warm water and taking a good multivitamin. No scrubbing with the towel either. It calmed down within a month and I had glowing, perfect, balanced skin within two months. 
  43. Once you start wearing designer clothes you’ll never go back. 
  44. Rich people, of either sex, never have cheap shoes or cheap luggage, ever. 
  45. If you’re going to whistle-blow, tell the hidden truth about something or expose a network, be ready to leave it permanently and say goodbye to that phase of your life or career and everyone in it. Even if people agree with you privately, they’re not going to stand up and take the bullet with you. 
  46. Even so, never protect wrongdoers. The silence of witnesses actively supports perpetrators and enables abuse. When someone breaks the silence, eventually all the toxic matter comes out. Always out the abusers you know. 
  47. If you notice something as a passer-by in daily life that strikes you as unjust or unequal, always make a complaint, write about it or flag it up in some way. At the bottom of the complaint, write, “I am going to publicise this even in the case of non-response.” You’ll feel better, and eventually complaints do add up and shift things. 
  48. Never do anything when you’re angry. Don’t confront anyone, don’t fire off an email. 
  49. That said, if you’re not the panicking type, sometimes when you’re angry, you say exactly the right thing. 
  50. If you can’t decide what to do about something, go for a long walk and the answer’ll come to you. 
  51. If someone at work says something a bit insulting or ‘off’ and you immediately want to answer back, instead say and do nothing. Absolutely nothing. Just look at them gently. Perhaps raise an eyebrow. Merely wait. The situation will magically reverse itself in your favour. Then, if you can, gather your things and leave in silence. This will become a cherished memory. 
  52. Don’t grovel, apologise for yourself, downplay your work or behave submissively, it’s nauseating. 
  53. Don’t be a man-worshipper or -enabler, it’s pathetic. It’s toxic. And it’s not mutual. 
  54. If any girlfriend tells you they suffered abuse, believe them. Survivors don’t lie. In fact they usually downplay what happened. 
  55. After your two years of work experience, shadowing, body-of-work building or interning, don’t do routine everyday or regular work for free. If you do, you’re telling the world you think you’re worthless. Sometimes however, unpaid one-off appearances at public events are worthwhile. Be strategic in choosing which ones. 
  56. Study what fascinates and challenges you, not the subject you’re easily good at. 
  57. Be friendly, it makes life interesting and joyful. 
  58. Bad people are brilliant actors and fantastic liars. But they always drop hints about themselves. If something strikes you as odd, ask a direct question. 
  59. Never get involved in interpersonal bickering, petty politics or in-fighting. Especially not online. It’s a waste of time. 
  60. Don’t mess people around by making appointments and then cancelling or continually changing them. Not at work. Not in your personal life. It’ll mark you out as a skeevy, unreliable two-face. 
  61. Don’t go on about how stressed or how busy you are. You’re not. 
  62. Carbs, sugar and caffeine give you thrush. Antibiotics also give you thrush. Alcohol, sugar and caffeine give you cystitis. And then there are those times when it’s clearly God’s punishment for having sex. 
  63. Cranberry tablets, gallons of water and nettle, lemon and ginger, dandelion or fennel tea are all miracle cures for cystitis. At the same time, a standard brand painkiller takes the edge of while you sort it out. 
  64. One and a half glasses of rosé. Or two glasses of champagne. Or one Martini. All with food. That’s enough for a lovely buzz and not so much that you’ll end up with your head down a toilet, your stomach in your mouth, your lipstick on your chin and a little bit of squirted out pee on your skirt. 
  65. If you’re hosting a party and you want to take it to another level just go around with a tray of tequila shots, salt and cut limes. 
  66. When you learn a new language you wake up your brain, unlock a new part of the world and discover a new culture, history, landscape and an entire population of potential friends. 
  67. Enjoy, learn, grow, earn, survive and be practical, but forget about bogus concepts like career and success. Life isn’t a game that you can win. Nobody’s following or cares about your individual career trajectory, which is an illusion. 
  68. Power relationships are obvious. Look at who’s doing the drudge work and who’s having long lunches and casual meetings, who looks tired and who looks breezy, who’s being paid more and who’s being paid less, who’s taking the credit, who has room to manoeuvre, who gets the perks and who doesn’t, who’s being promoted and who isn’t. It’ll all be clear as day, right in front of your face. Analyse any situation by interpreting what you witness. 
  69. Celibacy feels completely and utterly fantastic. 
  70. Romance, sexuality and sexual love are not that important or interesting. Friendships, colleagues, artistic collaboration and parental love are richer. 
  71. Do what you enjoy, pay attention to what’s around you and relax in the moment. 
  72. You can become friends with colleagues but you can’t become colleagues with your friends. 
  73. Give money if you want. But never lend money. You won’t get it back. Asking for it back’ll leave a bad taste in your mouth, perversely. 
  74. You’re never going to be rich and famous. 0.00000001% of people on the planet are rich and famous. They may not be nice. They may not be good. They may well not be happy. So don’t torment yourself about ‘making it’ in your industry. 
  75. Liars and cheats don’t change. They’re nasty people of bad character. Everything they say is a lie, everything they do is part of a game. 
  76. Know that your sin will find you out. Luckily that goes for everyone else too. 
  77. Change with the times. You can’t live at 35 as you did at 25. There comes a point when you have to stop hanging out, shape up and get your life together, whatever that means for you. For some people it’s settling down, for others it’s travelling the world, commencing the big project, getting the PhD or making a career change. But you have to change because nobody wants to be the oldest swinger in town. 
  78. People who are absolutely hotly 100% adamant that they will not have children had miserable childhoods, hate and feel anger towards their parents and are terrified of replicating their own history. 
  79. Agonising relationship drama is a sign of toxicity, not passion, whatever the relationship. 
  80. Marriage is a nasty trap and the nuclear family was the world’s shortest lived social experiment. 
  81. Don’t splurge out huge amounts of career or general life information to people you’ve just met. It’s cheap and chippy and unwittingly backfiringly revealing, and you don’t know what they’re going to do with the info you just gabbled out of your mouth in a desperate bid to please. 
  82. It’s true that your real friends reveal themselves in a crisis and fair-weather friends disappear. But fair-weather friends are great to take to parties. Think of them as party pals. Not everyone has to be gathered around your bedside when you discover you’re dying of herpes or whatever. 
  83. Self-hatred is a boring, destructive, curiously narcissistic waste of time. Do something for or with others instead of constantly thinking about yourself. 
  84. Home is the place you heal, replenish, create and feel completely safe, completely yourself, joyful, permanent and replete with promise. Even if you never had that or don’t have it now, you can create it. 

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